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.
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