Trials in every meaning of the word, attacked by a weta, and Rory impersonates Noah in the bathroom - 26/03/07

I think the amount of content in the Real Sport and My Sad Life sections should explain the paucity of content in Local News. Haven't had a lot of time to pop the head out of the gopher hole to see what is happening in the real world.

LOCAL NEWS

Well, some nice individual left a pile of poisoned wheat in Western Springs Park, and some eighty birds ingested it and many died (30). We aren't talking endangered birds, mostly geese, swans, ducks, pigeons, but pretty ugly nevertheless. They left the poison packet in a nearby bin so at least they knew how to counter it (the poison lowers the body temperature so warming them up helped. (Western Springs Lake and Park are very close to where Rory goes to school and Hannah's soccer club, hence they are both named after it).

A truck took out a female motorist near Morrinsville.

News this week that the Maoris want to own all our fresh water. That could be pretty interesting.

An 82 year old diver vowed to continue diving solo, despite being rescued from rocks.

A 46 year old diver got stung by a sting ray (in the stomach so he didn't do a Steve Irwin) and lived to sell his story.

They are still talking about the anti-smacking legislation, with no mention still of what this will mean for dominatrixes (dominatrices?).

Another truck killed a teen who should have been more careful crossing the road. My experience with certain teens in our house is that this of course is highly unlikely. The teen was only hit with the wing mirror, but it was a good shot.

We had our first car surfing fatality this week, more natural selection there. It was on the way home from a funeral for a friend who died in a car accident. Seems we have an unbreakable chain there.

The NZ bio-fuelled boat Earthrace seems doomed. It munted a propeller then ran into a fishing boat and one man was lost.

Bit of a fuss this week about a convicted killer working at the zoo. Not sure why that is such a bad thing. He was convicted of killing his mother six years ago and this part-time work is part of his preparation to return to the community. I suppose it could turn into a situation like that other psycho that went on a rampage and lost a leg a month or two back. But killing animals isn't considered murder, so I don't get it.

A woman rock climber died when she tried to catch a falling rock, whilst celebrating her birthday. Nobody seems to know if it was the rock's birthday.

WORLD NEWS

Helen went to visit George this week. George thought she smelled funny, and laughed at jokes that weren't jokes. Like the one about free trade. Funny how leader of the free world isn't in to free trade. Helen felt it was a successful meeting. George wanted to know how come the Prime Minister from New Zealand didn't sound Dutch, and whether it was traditional for men to wear skirts there like in Scotland.

REAL SPORT

Hannah had her soccer trial on Tuesday and Thursday night, and it was a bit of a trial I have to say. Not sure what's going to happen, the teams are all over the show. There is no 14th grade this year (we found out after the trial) so she could be playing 15th.

Hannah and Charlotte played for both WSC Junior Boys then Girls on Friday. The Boys were missing three key players (Rory, Gareth, and Ben) who were playing the Senior game at the same time. The Junior Boys lost 4-9, but if we'd had our regulars we would have won. We had seven girls playing, and if we'd got all the boys out we would have done better (it was first game ever for one of the boys). The Junior Girls played straight after, recording their second win, 7-4.

Rory's Senior team were playing Kelston Boys, who were expected to top the group. WSC was 0-4 down but they fought their way back for a surprise 4-4 draw. This was an excellent result for them.

Hannah and Charlotte helped again on Sunday with the Junior Boys. They were playing Massey Boys, which I wasn't too worried about but then a bunch of their girls showed up. Their girls are very good, and three of their best got in the pool (they beat the Springs girls 15-0 a week ago). It wasn't the rout I was dreading, in fact quite the reverse. Final score 12-1 win for Springs.

Hannah had her intermediate polo trial on Saturday. Rory and I helped with the selection, grading them in different aspects of play. Rory is going to coach the 2nd team. There is little doubt Hannah will make the top team.

Found out last night that Rory has New Zealand U15 Polo trials coming up.

SPORT

The Blues beat the Waratahs 34-6 (The Waratahs are not having a good season). The Crusaders beat the Stormers 36-11. The Highlanders lost to the Bulls 13-22 at home. The Hurricanes lost 7-30 to the Lions (with their All Blacks playing, which is a surprise). The Brumbies ended the unbeaten run of the Sharks 21-10.

New Zealand Cruised through top of their group (C) in the World Cup. Not sure who they play next. Australia won group A. Sri Lanka won Group B and the Windies unconvincingly won group D.

The Chiefs snuck a rare win in the Super 14 21-19 over the Reds (who aren't doing well).

The Warriors continue their winning form, beating the Broncos (last year's championship winners) 24-14. This is first time ever they have won the opening two games of the season.

NZs All Whites lost 0-4 to Costa Rica (soccer).

Euro 2008 qualifying over the weekend. England had 0-0 draw with Israel, Kazakhstan beat Serbia 2-1, Turkey beat Greece 4-1, Spain beat Denmark 2-1, Russia beat Estonia 2-0. France beat Lithuania 1-0, Portugal beat Belgium 4-0, Germany won 2-1 over Czech Republic, and the Netherlands drew 0-0 with Romania.

MY SAD LIFE

Well, I neglected to mention seeing the Goodins briefly the weekend before last. During the visit, Hannah gave Caitlin some old tap shoes, and they made a racket out on the deck for a while. On Monday, I was informed by Ross that Caitlin woke them up on Sunday morning with a demonstration in the shoes, which were fastened with paper clips because she can't tie laces yet. Very cute, very funny, and I take no responsibility whatsoever. We haven't seen them since which suggests they aren't prepared to risk the kids picking up any new nasty habits.

Caitlin has her introductory tap lesson today at 3:30pm.

We had a stretched Hummer show up in our street. It was big, man. Remember all my jokes about the pantry? Many would apply to the Hummer, baby. It was big. (pantry jokes are now re-treaded at end of this email) Anyway, the kids got in it, they got photos around it. The guy driving it drives it for his mate now and again, and lives in our street across the road and few doors away. He is Charles Riechelmann, used to play for Auckland, the Blues, and was an All Black but kept getting injured.

Hannah's school project dominated spare time in evenings until Thursday night. Now, let's consider the phrase "spare time". Bearing in mind that I have not spent an uninterrupted evening at home since Saturday the 17th, there certainly doesn't appear to have been a lot of time spare. Friday morning, Hannah and I went to the pool at 7am with the WSC girls for some extra polo training, then took the project to school directly from there. It looked pretty good, it just took too much time. Apparently many kids asked for extensions on time. I could not bear to drag the thing out even longer.

I bought a new hard disk video recorder on Tuesday because I don't ever get to see television shows when they air. The new one does a few things better than the old one. No news on repair of old one yet, when the old one returns we will be able to record two channels at once.

Hannah didn't win the cake thing, but she did get highly commend and won a block of chocolate. It didn't make it home.

Paul unearthed a letter from me that was written by me back in 1992, about ten weeks after Rory was born. It describes his birth, me grappling with parenthood, and a few other issues of the day. It is interesting how similar my writing style still is.

Koos turned 42 on Saturday. His broken wrist turned 63. We had dinner with them on Saturday night, and Sjaan, Pam, and Sander. Was good to see them all. We were given news of a likely visit from Heidi in August. The scars on Koos's wrist from the surgery to repair the break are impressive. He's just returned from another couple of weeks in Hong Kong.

Allan is crossing the great arid continent on a train. I don't know if Jacqui went with him. Not sure when he returns.

Rory reinforced the widely held belief (in our house) that teenagers are morons with legs. He had a shower and failed to notice the water lapping around his lower calves (ie above ankles) and proceeded to water the bathroom and hall. The next morning he left the house unlocked. I can't believe we let them vote let alone drive. I think I can say that the punishment has been so far appropriate and should also be motivational in preventing future lapses in water awareness. No texts, no games, no computers, no fun.

After some reshuffling on Saturday, decided I had more time to go see the Motat military on Saturday than Sunday. Took Rory and an unamed female (she lives in Meola Road, plays polo for Western Springs). We saw the Bambis there, stayed a couple of hours. Watched them shoot lollies out of a mortar, Rory and Priya had a radio control tank battle and went for a ride on a military truck. Was knackered after that (we walked there and back as well as around a fair bit) but went straight off to intermediate polo trial. When we saw Bambi on the train as we arrived he called out to me:

Bambi: "Hey Rob!"
Me: "Yes"
Bambi: "We're on a train!"
Me: "Really? Well done!"
Me: (under breath) "I did wonder what the big black thing with smoke coming out the chimney was, I did think it was a coal fired car."

Plans for Matt and Kristy's wedding are drawing to a close, I now have a brief for the speech and plan for the weekend. It is weekend after next.

I cleaned out the pantry on Sunday, so the jokes seem even more apt than they did previously, especially as there now appears to be more space in there..

I also found a sodding big female weta under my laptop in my office. Just imaging for a moment typing on your keyboard then noticing two rather large jagged legs hanging out from beneath your keyboard. Diana thought it was dead but it wasn't. What really worries me is that she might have laid eggs in here somewhere and I am going to see a ton of baby wetas emerge.

The number portability project I have been working on for the last few years is about to go live this coming Sunday, 1st April, a day that has been burned into my mind for quite some time. My cellphone number ported on Wednesday, finally. Seems to go okay so far.

Almost it for now, don't say I didn't warn you about the pantry jokes.
Oh, and in case you are wondering, I did check for wetas this morning before I started typing.
Rob

If you are bored, read on…….

THE PANTRY JOKES

In case you never saw them first time around, here they are again, four years later. Like Steve Martin's 20 nose jokes, Rob's 20 pantry jokes:

1. If it was in Africa, it would be declared an independent state.

2. So, are we going to go shopping in odd months or even ones?

3. If Diana misbehaves, she can sleep in the pantry.

4. Oh look! Dr Who has just landed in our kitchen.

5. The cat is hiding because she knows I want to find out if I can swing her in it.

6. I'm going into the pantry, I may be some time.

7. The Guinness Book of Records want to come and measure it.

8. Boeing just called, they want to build a 747 in it.

9. If the pantry was in Ross and Kath's house they would have a family of Pakistanis living in it.

10. We found a tradesman in there this morning that has been lost since Thursday.

11. It wouldn't just be gays that would take a while to come out of the pantry.

12. In case of an emergency in this pantry, follow the red light strips to the nearest exit.

13. How many trees gave their lives for this pantry?

14. Why doesn't it have a remote for the door like the other garage?

15. The only pantry in the world that is required to have it's own smoke alarm.

16. It's so big that the food is past it's expiry by the time it makes it to the shelf.

17. Please address deliveries of food to 36a Dignan St.

18. It is the only pantry visible from space.

19. You've heard of a walk in pantry, this is a drive in (and you can certainly take a walk IN the pantry).

20. When you open the pantry, the tide comes in.

The 21st is from Gavin, and isn't funny at all:
21. At last, a pantry that is in proportion with my waistline.

New Zealand wins opening World Cup cricket match, the Lahar finally does the business, and a news crew does something useful - 19/03/07

Daylight Saving Time is now a memory, we are back to regular time. Not adjusting at all well, though.

LOCAL NEWS

Well, on Sunday morning, the predicted lahar finally came out of Ruapehu. It was predicted to happen on 27th January, and many Thursdays subsequent to that until the press got bored and moved on.

The NZ mint had a bit of strife when golfer Jack Nicklaus, on visiting NZ, said that he could not remember endorsing or signing some gold coins with his image on them. Bizarre really. They reckon they have an agreement they negotiated some time ago. I don't understand why people think signatures confer value, when nowadays some people sign so many autographs they are neither rare nor valuable.

A Taiwanese student died a few days after being struck by a tree that came over during wild weather mid-week. We had 48mm rain one night, and some nasty winds.

Prince Andrew is here, not sure why. The Queen magnanimously recognised a soldier from WWII, only 60 years after he did his bit, and a few days after he died. What a bloody crock.

There was a bit of a weird home invasion in Napier where a local journalist got a chunk bitten out of his ear.

St Patrick's Day was celebrated appropriately around the place.

We had another "it's interesting because they used one of them new-fangled portable phones" story. A woman drove off a cliff, but despite being apparently utterly thick, she managed to call someone on her mobile phone and tell them of her plight. The police couldn't find her so they then drove up and down the hill with the siren going and she said when they go louder.

A freight train hit a car near Canterbury, nobody was injured.

A truck dropped a 20 foot container onto a parked car with a man in it, he escaped injury also.

The number of people filing for bankruptcy has hit an eight year high. Although NZs rate of bankruptcy is considerable lower than Canada and US (and lower than UK, Australia), it is still on the high side. The official view is that people should be reducing debt (although the comment that they should be starting to now seems a bit late to me).

Two nine year old girls disappeared on Saturday, causing a major search operation. They were found by a police woman, but they ran away from her (how unfit was the officer, you wonder). They were then found again by a news crew. Possibly the first time a news crew has does something useful in a while (possibly ever). At least they broke the passive observer rule.

WORLD NEWS

The whales struck back this week, when a sperm whale killed a Japanese fisherman who was trying to help rescue him. Whales aren't silly. I would be worried too, if I was a whale and a bunch of Japanese fishermen tried to rescue me.

The Pakistan cricket coach, Bob Woollmer, died overnight. First reports were that he was found unconscious on the floor surrounded by vomit. Sounds like his departure may have been chemical assisted. They lost their first two games and are basically out of the World Cup with one game to go.

REAL SPORT

Not sure where this should go, but the water polo tournament continued until Wednesday night, by which time Hannah had become a true water polo groupie and was getting her shirt signed by the players.

Rory's junior team lost 4-12 against Kelston, a team packed also with club players.

The social league game was against a depleted team that got three club coaches to help out, so it was not pretty. I am not even sure of the final score, probably about 5-10 or so. I did block a shot from Joe Bensley, who was in u15 National Team, which was funny.

SPORT

Well, NZ looked knackered in the first World Cup game. They got the Poms out for about 204, but at 3/19 they weren't looking good. Somehow they did it, with nearly ten overs spare. First time they've beaten the Poms in a while. Bet the Poms weren't happy.

Herchelle Gibbs slammed six sixes in one over against the Netherlands. It wasn't pretty. He scored about 70 runs and seven sixes, so not many against their other bowlers. The feat cost Jonnie Walker a million dollars, because it promised to pay that much to charity if anyone did.

In other matches, Bangladesh beat India and Ireland beat Pakistan, causing problems for both cricket heavyweights. I don't think Pakistan can make it through now, having lost to the Windies as well.

Man Utd beat Bolton 4-1, Chelsea beat Sheffield 3-0, Man City had a much needed win against Middlesbrough 2-0. Charlton beat Newcastle 2-0, Everton beat Arsenal 1-0, and Villa drew 0-0 with Liverpool.

The Crusaders got a useful away win, 32-10 over the Bulls. The Hurricanes list to the Sharks in South Africa. The Stormers beat the Waratahs 16-10 in Sydney, not looking good for the Waratahs, Cheetahs beat the Brumbies, and the Force beat the Reds. The Western Force are third on the table. The Blues slipped to second but had a bye. The Sharks are top but have now played nearly all their home games and they don't travel well.

The Warriors beat the Eels in their first match of the season, 34-18. At least they don't start the season two wins down this year.

France won the six nations rugby title on points differential from Ireland. The Irish won't be happy.

MY SAD LIFE

Rather too much of the weekend was dedicated to homework. Hannah has been working on her project during the week but the weekend was dominated by construction of things for her character model (for English, no less). She did some good stuff, but it just takes so much time.

Rory had a social studies essay to do, which didn't take too long. I wrote one too, well most of one, in about 15 minutes.

Rory and I helped Paul shift furniture, although it sounds like he was doing it a lot longer than we were.

Hannah's soccer trial was postponed due to awful weather. You know it's bad when they cancel three days ahead.

Our hard disk video recorder seems to have died. We are getting it looked at under warranty but being without it is a major lifestyle change. We just don't worry about what time things are on because we record them anyway and watch them when we get around to it. If this means I miss Boston Legal tomorrow night I might cry.

Hannah baked a cake for a school fundraising thing on Thursday night. It was a baking competition and they sold the offerings by the piece (after the judges got some, the judges must have been pretty full, there were 72 cakes).

Finally got the lens I have been waiting for since before U14 Nationals in December. Got it just in time to take to Italy v Serbia game on Wednesday night. It was cool. Now I just need more games to use it at. Can't do it at games where I am coaching. For those interested, it is 70-200mm with F2.8 maximum aperture the whole way. Awesome in low light conditions.

After emails with Jono I decided to try uploading some photos to flickr.com. What a waste of time. I tried searching for them based on tags they were given and I cannot find any of them. If you go here you can see them: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7361721@N05/

There aren't that many yet, just from water polo tournament. One of Hannah getting shirt signed. Also some photos of praying mantis eating a cicada.

In theory I am porting my mobile from Vodafone to Telecom tomorrow. Won't be able to receive texts for a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed. Been postponed twice already.

POT WATCH

This needs to be renamed WEED WATCH. Not good news. We live in hope.

Well, that's enough for this week. Stay tuned next Monday for another incredibly repetitive and dull instalment. When will it end?

Big water polo matches in little old Henderson and sitting behind a desk is now harmful to your health - 12/3/07

It is raining, but only a little. The ground really needs it.

LOCAL NEWS

Trucks are back in the news. We had two logging trucks have a go at each other near Mangakino. The same day, another truck decided to lift a rail bridge by going under it was a high load. It totalled the truck when it caught fire and moved the tracks, closing the line near Marton.

The next day, a person was hit by two cars in the Hawkes Bay, so now cars are double teaming.

For what I call the "it's interesting only because it is on the internet" reason, someone made the front page by texting a mate to call 111 because they crashed their car in a place with poor coverage. Amazing because someone used the only means possible to call for help.

News today that office workers are more at risk of blood clots that air flight passengers. I know I do work in an office but I am up and down all over the show, so I think I am okay.

A Rwandan asylum seeker is thought to be facing (or rather running away from) genocide charges in Rwanda. Just what we need in New Zealand is more asylum seekers to occupy our legal system (we are still funding Ahmed Zaoui's stay here, for about three years so far).

WORLD NEWS

The Garuda air crash on Wednesday was not good. It seems like pilot error but too early to tell. There were five Aussies that died (in business class, not economy, perhaps the rumours about the pointy end are true) but no NZers.

Not sure I have mentioned the water shortage in Australia before, but it's pretty bad. They are putting in a special pool at the Rod Laver arena for swimming, diving, and water polo champs, and people aren't happy, some reckon it's leaking. They are using the tennis stadium because it has 15,000 seats, about six times that of the regular venue.

REAL SPORT

Hannah had an inter-school softball tournament on Tuesday. I helped with transport. Hannah was captain and first batter. I think she didn't make 1st base once, and got one home run. The girls did well until they drew with Pasadena (a reasonably weak team, but we had subbed two reasonably good players) and lost 1-7 to Kowhai. They still made the semi-final as the 2nd qualifier in their group, and they beat the top qualifier from the other group, which got them to the final, against Kowhai again. They were down about 0-5 in first innings but got Kowhai out for no runs in the second and managed to score a few themselves. The final score was a 5-5 draw, and they were declared 1st equal winners (nobody wanted to hang around for tie breakers). An excellent result. The Year 7 girls team came second, so the girls did far better than the boys (neither team placed).

The Western Springs juniors girls (I am coaching them because I coach the junior boys at the same time, even though I have no child in the team) were short a couple of key players but luckily so were the MAGS team. MAGS had Miranda Chase play for them (she is a good player, her sister is the coach and she plays for Ponsonby, and is joining Hannah's soccer club) but that wasn't enough to swing it. Springs won 12-4, the first ever win for the girls (they did not win a single game last year).

Because we only had one polo game on Friday, it meant I got to see Hannah play soccer on Friday night. Her team dominated again, not sure of the score, but they had fun, it was nice to be finally able to see Hannah playing soccer again.

The social league polo game was against Teal Girls, a bunch of players we know pretty well (including Miranda mentioned above, and many others). I played, which was fun. Went in goal for about the last two minutes, made one save. Took one for the team, when I had the goalies hand on my shoulder so he couldn't stop the ball coming into the goal. Not sure of the final score, think we might have won.

Western Springs Seniors played Green Bay, the two hippy schools against each other (although I think Green Bay now has a uniform). wasn't pretty, final score was 15-0 to Springs. Think Rory scored two.

Hannah has a soccer trial on Thursday.

SPORT

Boxer Shane Cameron broke his right hand in the first round of a bout, but hung on to win in the eighth. What a barbaric pastime, it's not really a sport.

The Highlanders had a rare win, beating the Queensland Reds 37-17. The Blues beat the Lions 41-14. Hurricanes lost to Western Force, their first win ever, I think (17-18). Chiefs and Crusaders had a bye.

Chelsea came back from 1-3 down to draw 3-3 with Spurs in FA Cup quarter final. Man Utd also drew 2-2 with Middlesbrough, Blackburn beat Man City 2-0 and Watford beat Plymouth 1-0.

The Southern Cross Water Polo Tournament has been running and continues to Wednesday. We have been to see quite a few games, we have seen men's teams from Serbia, Italy, Russia, Canada, Great Britain, and NZ plus women's teams from the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany, and NZ.

The cricket world cup starts this week.

England surprised everyone and beat France in six nations.

MY SAD LIFE

Hannah went to Pasifika, a pacific island festival thing at Western Springs, she went with a few friends (Ruby, Hayley, and Miranda). She said she smelled an odd odour of death and decay at one point, then realised she was standing next to Helen Clark.

We spent a lot of time at the pool over the weekend, Diana saw four international games, I saw three (took kids to see two on Thursday night as well). We are sneaking off this afternoon to check one out as well.

Didn't see much of Rory over the weekend, he had a party at Cassidy's and then refereed flippa ball on Sunday (which required us to drop him off and pick him up).

On Sunday, Hannah was working on her character model, an English homework assignment, which involves making a figure, sewing clothing for it, and building a set for the figure. Not sure what this has to do with English (except for perhaps reading the instruction manual for the sewing machine).

On Wednesday and Thursday, Paul and I (but mostly Paul) were fiddling in Java to do a water polo scoreboard. I managed to make a couple of minor changes, was a bit of fun.

Thursday was a painful day in a few respects. I lost my cellphone, when busy at St Lukes trying to replace the headset for my mobile (I knew I didn't want to go there, now I know why). No idea where, not worth much, except for losing all the mobile numbers stored in the sim card. Got a replacement phone which is okay, but I am porting to Telecom very soon as part of the project I am working on. I also spilled soy sauce on the seat of the car (not while eating sushi and driving, oh no, was when I was looking for the damn cellphone whilst parked).

Mum has returned from Norfolk Island. It sounds like you can see pretty much everything there is in a week. She seemed happy enough. I should have got her to get me some Lego from there. In the old days everyone brought back Lego from Norfolk Island, it was a weird tradition, they sold more Lego per head of population than any out country (with no sales tax, a population of 2,000 people, and ten to twenty times that in tourists it isn't surprising). Now that sales tax is lower in most countries it isn't quite such a thing.

Time to do some real work, something fun like minutes.

A press agency ignores non-news and the French are excited about an amphibian - 05/03/07

Weather continues to be summer-like, despite 1 March officially being Autumn.

LOCAL NEWS

Chinese students in New Zealand have hit back at claims they are the worst cheats at university. One spokesmen said that the figures were distorted because they weren't good enough at avoiding detection. Another said that those that were caught were just the tip of the iceberg. From Diana's experiences at work, I think there is certainly a cultural view that the result is more important than the effort or accomplishment. Complaints that the results of the investigation will lead people to illogical conclusions like "all Chinese cheat", "only Chinese cheat", and my personal favourite "all Chinese go to university", are just silly.

A sound purported to be an act of bestiality, played on Radio Sport, has earned a weak reprimand from the Broadcasting Standards Authority, which has in turn upset the Churches Broadcasting Commission (yep, there is such a thing, I was surprised too). All they did was play a couple of sound bites together. Yes it was dodgy, no I don't think children are going to run out to the nearest paddock and get up to mischief because of it.

Trucks are behaving themselves, but cyclists have been on the wrong end of a few accidents with two killed and three injured in the last few days.

A six legged frog found in the Waikato continues to attract attention. The initial approaches came from French restaurants.

WORLD NEWS

The Associated Press news agency has gone up considerably in my esteem, by banning stories of Paris Hilton. There is a little conflict here as this in itself resulted in news around the place. They joked that they would add North Korea to the list of banned topics but I can think of plenty of "names" to add.

REAL SPORT

Rory had interschool swimming on Thursday, he didn't win any races but being a 14yo in the 14-15 comp he did pretty well coming 5th in the breaststroke and 7th in freestyle. His freestyle time was 27.89s, more than a second inside the level 1 qualifying time.

Hannah had swim sports at school on Thursday, too. I went along. The girls were generally way better than the boys. Hannah came second in Breastroke and third in 100m freestyle. Don't think she qualified for freestyle relay team but very close. She is going to interschool swimming, so she's happy.

After the game last week for the juniors I was kind of worried that we would struggle to get a win. That fear proved to be foundless when they played Rutherford. It was pretty much one way traffic, the final scored was 12-2. Rory scored four goals. Better still, two players scored their first goals ever in water polo, including Rory's friend Cassidy.

The senior game was two hours later and expected to be very different. It was against Avondale B, but Avondale is a very large school (about three times the number of students) and their A Team is playing premiere (which is very tough). The B team have some very capable girls playing for them, although one was missing. The game was toughest that the seniors have had so far, but they won 7-4. Rory scored one goal, had a few other chances but just struggled, the Avondale goalie is pretty good (as much as I hate to say it).

I went to coach the Springs girls on Sunday, wasn't expecting great things. They did better than I thought, losing 4-5, possibly their best result.

Rory's social league team were winning comfortably, then were nearly caught, and finally won comfortably 11-5. Rory got two goals, I think.

Hannah had another kick around at soccer on Friday night, she took along Miranda Chase, a polo girl who has played soccer for another club. She would be a very good addition to the team. Fun was had, pretty sure Hannah scored a couple of goals.

SPORT

The Blues won 28-9 against Otago. The Crusaders lost 26-27 to the Sharks. Waratahs drew with the Force 16-16. Cheetahs drew with the Chiefs 22-22 (very unusual to get two draws in Super 14). The Hurricanes lost to the Stormers 17-30, which was unexpected (especially as it was at home for the Hurricanes).

Blackburn beat Bolton 2-1, Spurs beat 4-3 West Ham, Man Utd beat Liverpool 1-0, Arsenal and Chelsea both had wins.

There is a big water polo tournament on here this coming fortnight with teams from Serbia, USA, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, and Russia. We are going to try to see a few games.

MY SAD LIFE

There has been considerable activity in the house around buying tickets to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers concert. Attempts at deadlines on websites, borrowing credit cards, slipping cash to people in queues, you name it.

Hannah got a large amount cut off her hair, it's quite different now, still past shoulders, but definitely shorter. She has trouble getting it in to her swimcap, even though there is less of it.

Semi-interesting observation of Rory the other day. After watching the movie "Big Trouble in Little China", he was doing lots of things with "swords". Even beating up the sheets hanging on the line. And he's 14. Funny how the boy never really leaves the man.

Big occasion on Saturday for Rory was going to his friend Cassidy's house to help demolish the old garage. He wandered off happily, large boots, safety goggles in pocket, Fubar in hand. He looked like a member of the Village People, the construction worker guy. We didn't see him again until the following afternoon.

Rory got very, very lucky with his cellphone this week. He returned it to have the Bluetooth fixed. They decided that for the $320 it cost it was cheaper to give him the $320. Better yet, he got to get the phone back (I did offer to take a reduced figure and they didn't want to as they wanted to completely discharge their liability on the warranty). After he got it back, the Bluetooth started working again.

Paul and the Bambis were here for dinner on Saturday. Me and Hannah played Paul and Bambi in volleyball game. Hannah whacked me it the head, which hurt a lot but was fine next day. For the record, we won, but we have played a lot more than Paul and Bambi.

Paul is having a cleanout and is giving junk to other people. Now they all need a cleanout, too.

Kids had a water fight the other night and took great delight in hitting me in the crossfire. Come to think of it, I wasn't in the crossfire, I was well over to one side…….At least the water was good for the lawn which is looking very dry.

Nothing to report on the pot experiment, so it doesn't deserve it's own section this week
That'll be all for now.