Beware of sheep in dogs clothing in Japan, meanwhile New Zealand goes to the dogs - 30/04/07

LOCAL NEWS

The Herald showed how pathetically rugby-obsessed some people in this nation are (even if only their editorial staff) when the put the details of the new All Black jersey and the collar style on the front page. I do not see how anyone, in their right minds, could consider that news (and here I am talking about it).

87 year old Sir Edmund Hillary suffered a fall in Nepal, but seems to be recovering. He is a national institution, I would hate to think what it will be like when he dies.

A boat sank near Waiheke, with six people on board, the four adults survived, the two kids did not. Seems a little unfair, given that the kids spotted the leak. All seems a little strange. Even stranger, during the post-rescue investigation they found the body of an elderly woman floating around. News came later that a bung was missing. That's pretty stupid, one could almost say negligent.

A soldier was photographed at Anzac Day commemorations wearing medals that would have been impossible to get as a group, covering wars over 40 years and from four different countries. Apparently wearing medals you did not earn is an offence.

Dog attacks are very much the theme in the news here, vicious breeds, bad owners, the usual crap. Seems trucks are behaving themselves.

A woman, who's name was Gay, had an email to Xtra rejected because of dodgy content (being her name). She also happens to be gay. How she managed to send an email with her name in it four times I don't know (although I am thinking something like "your service is gay, get you gay act together, regards gay Gay" might do it, I would be surprised if she did say something like that).

A 21 year old New Plymouth man won't make 22 after crashing and burning while under the impression he was evading police. As usual, police had called off the chase several hundred metres before the accident. If the car travelled 300 metres beyond the point they stopped chasing and he was going 100km/hr (probably more) then he crashed 12 seconds after they called off the chase (I worked it out). That's not very long. Probably didn't know that had "called it off".

A man died from an allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant. He was allergic to nuts, chicken, eggs and seafood and apparently reality. I have a possibly unsympathetic opinion on this that I hold very strongly. If you are at risk from something as common as a peanut or egg you should ensure you take the appropriate precautions yourself, as it is your life that depends upon it. Anyone willing to assume that a waitress, restaurant manager, and cook are trained and prepared to keep all traces of random items away from your food must be either incredibly brave or stupid. It is no different to the kids with allergies going to school, they shouldn't, home schooling is the only answer or a special nut-free school for them all to go to. I do not see how the population in general should ever be expected to change their behaviour to safeguard these people when fatal exposure could come from touching a surface that has been touched by a peanut.

"Shocking" news in an exclusive TV interview last night. The lawyer of a woman (who fell asleep at the wheel and the resulting accident killed three of her children) feels she has been punished enough. Really? Never would have expected a defence lawyer to do things to get their client off the hook. The fact that she did not take unknown third parties out in her little prang is just lucky. The fact that the principle damage she caused was to her own children makes it no less negligent or criminal. Stealing your own stuff is not a crime. Killing your own kids is.

Meanwhile, no mention of charges against the parents without a bung, who you could argue were asleep on the job with regards their kids drowning in the boat mentioned earlier. Wonder if they will recruit the same lawyer?

Our glorious leader's dubious semi-artwork is up for sale again. There was controversy back in 2001 when Helen Clark was found out having signed a sketch as her own for charity that she did not draw (and to be honest, an eight year old could have done it, it was not particularly complicated). It is expected that it will fetch $2,000 (compared to $80 in 2001). Not a bad return. I am sure there is a law against profiting from crime, but not sure if the victim of the first crime is allowed to subsequently profit, as that actually seems like karma.

WORLD NEWS

Boris Yeltsin died this week, an interesting man, who was a part of some pretty big events in Russia's recent history.

(From Koos, I never noticed it) In Japan, some 2000 people have bought special poodles, known as Australian non-barking poodles. They happen to be sheep. Japanese customers have paid $1600 for their poodles, only to be told when they go to get their nails clipped that they have hooves instead of paws. Apparently not many people have seen sheep close up so they are easily mistaken for dogs. This needs no comment, it is beyond sad.

REAL SPORT

On Wednesday night we showed up to training to find the pool was double booked. Luckily we know their coach and we ran a join sessions with 32 kids in the pool but it went really well.

Rory swam at inter-zone swim sports on Thursday. The senior breaststroke relay team came second (he swam for them).

Rory's senior team played Mt Albert in a inter-pool playoff, and won 7-2, Rory got three goals, we thought it would be closer. His junior team played Mt Albert (recognising a pattern yet) and we thought it would be an old-fashioned thumping. The junior team played way better than I thought (four of them having played the senior game half an hour earlier). We were even winning at the end of the third quarter. We lost ground in the fourth, and lost 7-9, but it was a way better result than I expected. I was pretty happy, so was the team.

Hannah's team finally got a game, it was a 0-0 draw. Pretty hard fought, could be worse. We had one guest sub, after having one player away and one with a broken arm. I have to say that my daughter played very well, she works very hard.

The Western Springs College girls played St Mary's B on Sunday night. Hannah came along and played for them. She went in goal in the last quarter, scored one goal in 3rd quarter. They won 9-2. Without Hannah and Cella we would have lost, I think (Cella is goalie for girls and junior boys).

SPORT

Anzac Day began with New Zealand being swatted out of the cricket World Cup by Sri Lanka. The next morning, Australia swatted away South Africa. Yesterday they swatted Sri Lanka in to touch to win their third World Cup in a row. Cricket feels a bit like League right now.

The big news in Super 14 is the Brumbies getting a rare win and beating the Crusaders (giving them a rare loss). The Blues lost to the Bulls, things not going well there. Hurricanes just beat Highlanders 22-21.

Man Utd won their home leg 3-2 against AC Milan, Liverpool lost 0-1 to Chelsea in Champs League. Think they play reverse games next week.

In premiership, Chelsea had a surprise 2-2 draw with lowly Bolton, Man Utd were down 0-2 against Everton but scored four goals to win 4-2. Liverpool lost to Portsmouth 1-2. Arsenal beat Fulham 3-1. Man Utd need only a few points to be sure of winning this year.

The Warriors managed two late tries to beat the Rabbitohs 18-16.

Despite efforts of TV One, the interest in the Louis Vuitton is exceedingly low. I think Team New Zealand came third in first round, but very hard to tell. As it doesn't look too good, I think interest is waning.

MY SAD LIFE

Anzac Day we did the usual and went to the local parade, where our neighbour Jim marches every year.

Paul came along to water polo on Friday night and took some photos. I am not very good taking photos during a game with my kids playing because I get too caught up in it. I even printed some photos off on Sunday (was interesting exercise at a kiosk). I almost lost my free cellphone, too (actually, I did lose it, then a woman came out of a shop and handed it to me when she saw me looking around a chair I had sat in). For the second Sunday in a row, I spent time with Hannah while she tried on shoes.

We saw the Goodins, Charles, and Paul on Saturday night. Charles is flying back to Melbourne today (I think, or yesterday). Ross stole the snowballs. Hannah arrived home from a party just as they were leaving, so at least she got to say hello.

Saw Allan and Jackie for first time in ages on Sunday, Paul's had another knee reconstruction (same knee). He's not very mobile at the moment.

Have been trawling through my old emails and adding them to the blog site. Picked up a few gems along the way and continue to see how repetitive I am (I really do need to work on being more imaginative). What I find the funniest is the bits where I say I was busy because we had three sporting events over a weekend (whereas we had five this weekend and it felt quite normal). Perspective is a funny old thing, and it is very much like banging your head against the brick wall, you get used to things pretty quickly.

Interesting scene at our place on Thursday night. House full of people, mainly high school kids. Hannah, me, and two others screamed in from soccer practice. Priya was already there, Cella (the goalie) arrived in a lumberjack outfit. As I gobbled food, the house was chaos as we sussed out additional transport because I had room for only five in the car. It just struck me as I sat there that some of the people there could be friends of Rory's for some time to come, and that Hannah certainly knows many of them quite well so would ease a transition to high school (despite pumpkin soup fight with Rory). Okay, not sure why that was interesting. Sorry.

We had a few dramas with homework this week. A "group" project that seemed to consist of a seriously small group (I think there were four but nothing seemed to happen without Rory and often he seemed to be a very small group and one person never showed up once). It was delivered on time on Friday.

On the high school front, Hannah has not applied to St Marys despite much discussion. I suspect Western Springs is rapidly becoming the school of choice. I don't see why kids want to go to different schools from their siblings.

I found some missing socks this week, in Rory's drawer, then more in the hot water cupboard. But then my sock drawer was full. I think I have too many socks (I cannot believe I said that). Ever since my trip to SF when I got ten pairs of identical socks (so I never have lots of orphans any more) I think I have reached sock saturation. Unbelievable.

The neighbours in the front house moved out on Friday after being there ten years. The new ones are gutting the place, stripping walls and replacing the kitchen. The house was pretty tired, I have to say. It was a hive of activity all weekend. Not sure when they will move in.

Rory seemed very satisfied with his weekend. He gave us a small monologue about how he feels his weekends are normally not achievement-oriented. Not sure what made the difference. He did play very well and hard on Friday night at two games, he refereed half Hannah's soccer match (despite grumbling), spent the afternoon on Saturday at the movies with Priya, entertained the Goodin children, had a friend visit on Sunday (playing a new game he scored), then leave when Priya arrived, and then he came to watch Priya's game on Sunday night (she plays in the girls team), he finished off with a social league game on Sunday night. Nothing in itself struck me as being particularly productive.

Hannah has timetable conflicts this week preparing for interschool wrestling and soccer. Interschool soccer is on Wednesday. Weather not great but should clear sufficiently. She didn't get to play in it last year because of rain.

Diana is one a course this week. Don't remember the hours.

Research indicates that as a ratio of words to interesting content that is entry is one of the worst ever written. For that I apologise.

Katie scores twice on debut, the wind wins at Valencia, bus and dog chaos reigns - 23/04/07

Woefully incomplete, sorry. And late too. No excuses.

LOCAL NEWS

A man was charged with assault this week, for a crime he committed in 1979. The arm of the law may be long, but it does not appear to be particularly fast.

Meanwhile. a 15 year old who killed two people while driving exceedingly recklessly has had three months detention and was not even charged with manslaughter.

A bus driver failed to notice hitting a pedestrian on Dominion Road, the pedestrian died. The bus driver did stop and get out of the bus but did not "see" the man lying on the ground. Mind you, how did the pedestrian not see the bus coming? And how could he have been hit if not at the front? (was the bus going backwards?). It all seems very odd.

Another bus driver got distracted and took his passengers down a 35 metre bank on an unplanned basis. He may be in a bit of trouble.

Local music label Dawn Raid closed it's doors this week, upsetting a few people. Hardly the end of the world.

A police dog bit a three year old girl. I think he got distracted.

Two dogs in Murapara did not want to be outdone by the police dog so they mauled and killed a 56 year old woman. The dogs did not live to see another day more than the woman. Is capital punishment of animals right? Especially when their owners are complete pillocks you have to wonder who the guilty party really is. I look forward to a discussion from Brett on the topic.

Rumours of a common currency have resurfaced. Not sure it could happen because we could not have a separate interest rate mechanism if that happened (because people could just borrow in the cheaper country and invest in the higher interest country).

WORLD NEWS

The Virginia Tech was saturation viewing, voyeuristic and hideous. Meanwhile approximately 87 people commit suicide every day in the US, 199 die from diabetes, and 1792 from heart disease. Every day. Makes all the news about 33 dying (arguably from one grandiose suicide) seem excessive, doesn't it? Incidentally, Virginia has just under double the population of NZ and more than three times the number of murders, not that much worse, you could argue.

Meanwhile, one bombing incident in Iraq knocked 139 people off and we got very little on it. Somehow that doesn't seem right.

The Kaz II, a yacht, was found off the coast of Australia with nobody aboard. The motor was running, as was the laptop. This suggested that it had only recently been abandoned. However, GPS records showed it had not been steered for nearly a week. All very strange, life jackets still on board.

REAL SPORT

The only real sport this week was Rory's training for the U15 trial and the trial itself. He worked pretty hard during the week but some aspects of the trial he felt didn't go well. We had a billet stay with us on Saturday night and had to be out at Sacred Heart at 8am on Sunday morning (which was a bit of a struggle). We got news this morning that he is not in the 30 man training squad. I think I would say I am surprised but a little relieved. Not sure what he is thinking, not sure he wanted it that much. Very hard to tell, either way, what he thinks about it.

Katie Goodin had her first soccer game on Saturday. Diana and Hannah went to see. Katie scored two goals and their team won (not sure of exact score but think was 8-0 or something).

No soccer for Hannah, her team had a bye, we couldn't find a game for her to help out with either.

SPORT

The America's Cup Louis Vuitton challenge started with a very small whimper with the first four days lost to no wind. Then Team New Zealand lost their first race. No racing day six, and they won their first race on day seven. Not exactly riveting stuff.

Friday night wasn't such a good night for NZ Sport. The Kiwis lost to Australia in League, Team NZ lost first race in Valencia (oops), and Black Caps lost to Aussies in World Cup cricket. All were quite convincing.

Highlanders beat the Waratahs 26-25, Hurricanes lost to Crusaders, Blues lost 22-33 to Stormers, Chiefs beat the Sharks 35-27.

Man U drew 1-1 with Middlesbrough (bollocks), only saving grace is that Newcastle wrestled 0-0 with Chelsea. Arsenal 2-2 with Spurs, Liverpool beat lowly Wigan 2-0.

MY SAD LIFE

It was Sasha Bamberger's birthday on Friday, she is now four.

Hannah and Diana saw a lot of the Goodins this week. They visited the factory on Monday, and enjoyed it. I accompanied them on Thursday and walked Pippy on Takapuna Beach, which was a nice change of scene and as close as we got to a holiday over the school holidays. Then on Friday, Pippy brought most of the family over to walk on Meola Reef with Hannah and Diana again. Finally, Diana and Hannah saw Katie play her first soccer game on Saturday morning.

Charles is over here at the moment, saw him briefly with Kathryn and kids on Friday.

We had lunch with Mum on Tuesday, finally making it out to the new café. It was good, sat out on the balcony in the sun.

I had a bit of a do on Friday night to celebrate the completion of the number portability project. It was okay, but I think I would rather have been at the pool.

Diana, Rory, and Paul went to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers concert on Sunday night. Hannah and I decided not to go, didn't desperately want to go and $250 odd bucks for the tickets seemed like a waste. Instead, we went out to dinner at Prego, and had a very nice time. The restaurant was full kids (there was one table that was adults only, they call it "happy hour"). This did not diminish our experience. We also went shopping in the morning. In one shop, I think there were two pairs of shoes Hannah did not try on (seriously, she tried on nearly all of them, and they all seemed to be her size, you know, the sample ones).

My backup laptop died on Sunday night, it is pretty sad. We may have a little memorial service for it. Don't know the cost of replacement screen but suspect cheaper to buy another one, which I cannot justify.

Promise to try harder next week. That's all folks.

The woman who cried wolf, big news in the world of pots, and I do something exceedingly dodgy - 16/04/07

LOCAL NEWS

The NZ$ is rocketing upward against the US, it is nearly at 74c. Paul's a jammy bugger, really. It has been trading in sort of 60-70c for a while.

A psycho woman from Oamaru is now the pinup girl for the anti-smacking league. After going to court for beating one kid with a riding crop, she's now off to court again for another beating. She has posted a video of herself on Youtube defending her actions. It's quite surreal.

Big fuss this week about redundancies at TVNZ in the news department. To be honest, many of the jobs lost make me wonder what they actually did all day (like the sports reader for Breakfast who does bugger all other than say the same thing three times in 90 minutes). There is concern that the high standard of reporting will suffer, I however can't see how it could possibly get any worse.

Story Part 1 A woman in Papakura was raped and viciously attacked by a guy in a suit during the day. He sounded like he was dressed like a Mormon. I never trusted those buggers.

Story Part 2 Later turned out he was posing as a plain-clothes cop. Funny, after recent stories in the news you'd think cops would be the last person you'd let in to your house.

Story Part 3 Police reveal she was telling fibs and they are charging her with making a false statement. Not a good result. How she convinced them she was "viciously" attacked, I don't know. 30 investigators worked on it for three days before they realised it was false.

Speaking of police, they have tasered 13 individuals since they began using them, one of which was a pitbull. I am not sure that making a pitbull angry is a good plan. There was no mention of how it reacted.

Meanwhile, we appear to have had an actually rape in Hastings, a 12yo girls on her way home after a dance competition (krumping, whatever that is) at a school. Her parents thought she was tucked up in bed, at a relatives house.

We had a "This is your life" thing this week on Jonah Lomu, what a waste of space. He's 31, never really delivered what he promised, then showed himself to be suffering from kidney problems. Why bother? No wonder they are cutting costs and staff on TVNZ.

Some woman has been reported as having been approached by scammers on her cellphone as having "won a prize", she smelled a rat when they wanted some visa details to cover some costs. Not much of a prize. Stupid article. No wonder they are cutting down on journalists.

A moth larvae was found in an apple exported to Taiwan which is impacting on our apple exports.

A 64 year old man collapsed and died at the end of a 2.8k king of a bays swim at Takapuna. This does not inspire me to attempt the feat.

WORLD NEWS

Soft-tissue found in T-Rex thigh bone has revealed similarities to chickens. I wonder if T-Rex's woke the neighbours in the mornings?

There seems to be some disquiet in Russia, Mr Putin seems to be unpopular. There is talk of some states wanting to break away from Mother Russia.

REAL SPORT

Hannah had another soccer friendly on Saturday. She scored one goal, the team lost 2-4. They have a bye this coming weekend, first game of the season. What a pain.

Hannah played for Rory's social league polo team (I didn't because I carefully left my togs on the bed). They won about 7-2, Rory got three. Rory played an extra game for another team (we didn't see the game).

SPORT

The dream run at the World Cup was ended for the Black Caps by Sri Lanka. Not over yet but suddenly they seemed very fallible. A few days later they comfortably beat South Africa, basically winning a semi-final spot. Last Super 8 game is against the unbeaten Australians.

The minnows in the Super 8 are playing each other now, Bangladesh versus Ireland. Bangladesh look to be in trouble, if they lose they will be last equal bottom, but at least Ireland will have one win in Super 8.

Man Utd thumped AS Roma 7-1 in the second Champs League leg, now three England teams are in the semi-finals, but not Arsenal because they are crap.

Hurricanes beat the Cheetahs 37-15. The Chiefs thumped the Force 64-36, they aren't enjoying themselves in NZ. The Blues lost 25-32 to the Sharks, they kept three All Blacks on the bench until it was too late. Waratahs beat the Reds 26-13, Bulls beat the Stormers 49-12.

Arsenal beat Bolton 2-1, Liverpool drew 0-0 with Man City, Portsmouth continue their giant killing ways beating Newcastle (who are struggling, it has to be said).

Man Utd beat Watford 4-1, and Chelsea beat Blackburn 2-1 in FA Cup semi finals, so Man Utd face Chelsea in final.

NZer Johnny Reid won the A1 GP feature race in Shanghai. They should come second for the season, Germany going to win for certain I think with one race to spare.

America's Cup challenger series starts tomorrow.

The Warriors had a win, making it three from five so far.

MY PHILOSOPHY ON CONSUMERISM

Sorry, bit of a rant here. The controversy with GSK and Ribena recently has opened an old wound. People seem to fail to understand a very basic truth (that I hold to be self evident), which goes like this:
1. Businesses just want to make more money, therefore they want to sell more product at greater prices.
2. Consumers want to spend as little as they can on what they buy so that their dollar goes further.
So, basically we have two opposing requirements. With that in mind, I don't really understand why either party is ever surprised about the actions of the other.

I have been looking at advertising in newspapers recently. If you bought one of everything on sale in an average newspaper, you would end up lipo'd, botox'd, have a range of chemical and herbal remedies for things polite people don't discuss (given that I am not normally considered to be particularly polite, I wonder why I have not discussed them?), three air conditioning units, borrowed money, invested money, bought some curtains, bought two rugs (one for the house, one for my head), took four overseas holidays including a cruise, and bought two new cars. I think advertising is a concept that has lost it's way in very many respects.

Anyway, had an interesting talk with a chap this week who told me that his family bought almost everything they needed on trademe (New Zealand version of eBay), with the possible exception of groceries. He quoted examples like a set of bunks for the kids, which they sold for nearly the same amount when they got sick of them, which saves them considerable amounts of money. Everyone knows the premium that is lost when you drive a car out of the showroom, so changing your buying habits to let someone else take that hit makes an awful lot of sense. Perhaps it is time for the consumer to fight back.

MY SAD LIFE

Kids are on holiday this week, and were last week. Hannah had a few friends over for a movie, disappeared for the night on Thursday. Rory's existence has been revealed to the Priya's parents (so he has been "outed"). Her mum laughed. He spent the day over there a couple of times, and both parents were there, so they seem okay with it, which is good. He has even confessed of her existence to one of the lads (who's response was "what's a girl?").

I finally decided to upload my regular emails to a blog site. It's going to all be at:
http://robs-sad-life.blogspot­.com/
I have loaded a sample up there (67 so far, not many). I can't believe how many times I have said the same thing at the end of these emails. I am woefully unimaginative. I guess 500 odd different methods of signing off are a bit hard to come up with.

It is Ross and Kath's 19th wedding anniversary today. I guess congratulations for Ross and a long service medal and sympathy card for Kathryn are in order.

Tomorrow would have been my fathers 69th birthday.

Paul and Roger's Nan died on Wednesday, not unexpected. Was a pretty big week for Olwyn, our thoughts were with you. Paul didn't know this, but I used to have little chats with her when I rang and nobody else was home, it was a while ago now.

I went to the Blues game with Koos at North Harbour stadium. It wasn't the best game ever, but it got us out of the house.

I did something fairly dubious yesterday. Rory wanted to come with me and Paul to see the movie 300, but it was R16. Moving on from the dodge we pulled for Hannah to get in to R13 movie, I photographed his student ID, and tweaked it and printed it off. It was pretty easy, it has to be said. Not sure I want to be drawn into debate about the ethics and legality of it. In theory, it was a victimless act (not like doing a drivers license or something). What I will say is that the movie theatres are woefully useless at enforcing this rule and they are kidding themselves with their processes and pissing off the honest people. Rory's told everyone he knows and my coolness rating has doubled (on a scale of 1-10 I have gone from 0.2 to 0.4).

On Sunday, a water polo team mate of Rory's proudly announced that it was his birthday today, and in recognition of turning 15, he and his father got drunk and threw up (Zane managed three times). It seemed very, very, sad. He doesn't see a lot of his father, but this just doesn't seem right.

Diana and Hannah are off to visit the Goodins knitting factory, Lothlorian, today in Pukekohe, Paul is tagging along too.

POT WATCH

I know I haven't mentioned this lately, because there has been sod all to mention, but we have movement in in the five sad plant pots - one of the avocados. This caused great joy with Hannah and I. Nobody else seemed very interested, most surprising.

The bull gets over the fence, we try an open and understanding parenting methodology (which is short lived) - 09/04/07

There a lots of headings today, not sure why, but they seem appropriate. An attempt at the world's longest email (as a ratio to the boredom it generates)

LOCAL NEWS

Two trucks beat up on each other this week, causing mayhem. Just before the holiday period a couple of ladies tried to turn into a marae (as in make a turn, not transform) and a campervan had other ideas and turned them into statistics.

Cabinet Minister Steve Maharey said "f&*k you" in parliament this week, blaming an equipment malfunction (ie. the microphone was turned on). Perhaps it was a brain malfunction.

A pensioner vigilante in New Lynn foiled a robbery of a dairy by whacking him with a magazine stand. Impressive. The dairy owner made him buy thirteen copies of the Trade and Exchange afterwards.

Just for a change we had the usual crap about who was open for business on Good Friday. It is pathetic and the Government should sort it out. Websites can still trade.

The cost of streaking has gone up. Not really something that will impact my lifestyle.

An obviously retarded woman wondered how a $4000 holiday on her credit card eight years ago could turn into $47,000. Perhaps if she paid the card off eight years ago she would not have had such a practical lesson in the joys of compound interest.

Couple more injuries at speedways over the weekend but nothing fatal.

A badminton event in Christchurch had 60 people suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting, not good. At least in cricket you want more runs.

Two women were molested sexually, one in Christchurch, one in Wellington. All the more reason for our view contained later in this email.

DID YOU KNOW?

The 7th April is believed to be the date Jesus died? I mean, everyone knows the date he was born, but nobody knows the other one. Interesting really.

WORLD NEWS

The 15 British marines were released by Iran this week. It wasn't really very interesting, even when they were held captive.

There was an earthquake and tsunami that hit the Solomon Islands. There was some damage but a good bit of detritus was also removed.

REAL SPORT

The senior polo boys had their last Wednesday training this week. I think I am relieved. I did score a goal with my left hand, though, and got one past Rory in goal from beyond half way. I had fun, for an old person.

Hannah had interschool cricket on Tuesday, weather was great for it. I umpired four of the games. Hannah's team won four games and drew one, winning the tournament (there were only six teams).

Hannah had a soccer friendly on Saturday, which we couldn't see because we were weddinging (is that a word?). Her team lost 2-6 but she scored both goals.

SPORT

The Black Caps won their match against Bangladesh, the Poms lost to Sri Lanka. It really is dragging out, this World Cup. The Bangladeshis beat the South Africans in a surprise result, although they can be dangerous at times.

The Aussies are cruising to a win against England as I finish this off.

Man Utd lost against AS Roma 1-2, having ten men for most of the match after Paul Scholes was sent off. They then lost 1-2 to lowly Portsmouth on the weekend. Arsenal lost to West Ham and Chelsea beat Spurs. "Squeaky bum time" is producing some interesting results.

Blues beat the Cheetahs 26-8. The Crusaders then completed routed the Western Force (top placed Australian team) 53-0 (not nice, very embarrassing). The Chiefs had a much-needed win over the Highlanders 38-34. The Waratahs got thumped by the Brumbies and the Reds were towelled by the Sharks (I think). Not a great weekend for Aussie teams.

MY SAD LIFE

I think it is best to describe my life in the last week or so as "event driven". Not much has been done without the need to do so for a particular event. Mind you, some of the events have been artificially induced, mostly by my son...

We saw Gavin, Yana, and bump on Friday. Bump is growing and according to the evidence supplied by the scan is likely to be a girl bump. They had a 4D scan. Not sure what this means, sounds like it gives you their grades at school or something (I thought the fourth dimension was time).

We went out to dinner with the Goodins and Paul on Friday night, without children. Was a very good night, food was good. Had a few laughs. Was a good change of pace and distraction for Paul (see next paragraph for why).

Paul's grandmother, Nan, is not well. I don't know her latest status but our thoughts are with Olwyn especially (Nan is her Mum), and the family. Nan is due to turn 100 in August.

It was Brett's birthday on Saturday. April, not February. I don't know where the heck that came from.

Rory entered the entire lyrics from "Bohemian Rhapsody" into his phone and sent it to people as a 13-message text. Well, at least it kept him off the streets (for a short while).

As Diana rightly pointed out, we always get better behaviour from one child when the other one is in trouble. This weekend has been no exception.

Nanny has been playing with her new cell phone. We got a text the other day that said "..wt.jp0g". We were at dinner so we got kids to call her to make sure things were okay. Some lessons may be called for.

On Sunday we went to a casual after-match function at Matt & Kristy's. We looked at the photos, and watched the video. We brought the kids with us, they didn't attend the wedding (although Rory nearly did, in the boot of the car, see below).

The kids are on holiday for next two weeks.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Rory was asked if he knew how to order pizza. Answer: "Not for real, but I have crank called for it before."

THE WEDDING

Well, Matt & Kristy's wedding went very well, all things considered. I was a little optimistic about having some spare time on the day between the initial delivery run and things proper, but we had enough time to get everything done. The venue was very close to Bambi's house. The grounds were very impressive, with a large wide staircase then sweeping curve down to the pond where the ceremony was held. Diana worked pretty hard helping to get things ready, too.

I did manage to take a few photos (Nearly 350. Diana took some too). Matt has loaded a few photos on to a web site here:

http://dr-maul.com/blog/cpg147/thumbnails.php?album=7&page=5

Juliet, Kristy's daughter, now calls Matt "Dad" and had a lovely time at the wedding, managing to get more photos taken of her than any other person. They had the Nairobi Trio (a quartet, it's got to be good value) playing for most of the day/night. The photographer was very good working the crowd (I hope his photos are good, too). Kristy's Dad, Andrew, made a short but very touching speech, and Matts speech was also very good. Kristy didn't say anything, but I think she should have (although the old joke is that it's the last chance the groom has to get a word in edge-wise).

THE GIFT

Normally a wedding present wouldn't attract much attention (unless it was a particularly large toaster). However, Lance gave Matt and Kristy something a little extraordinary. A photo, of himself, looking deep and thoughtful. He made the frame himself, with purple fur, stars, and glitter. He signed the front and put a pretty funny piece on the back also.
You can see the happy couple, the photo, and Lance in the background here:

http://dr-maul.com/blog/cpg147/displayimage.php?album=7&pos=67

THE BOY

Well, a certain number one son was cruising towards a somewhat lower standing this week. He went "for a run" on Thursday night, and it was completely obvious that running he wasn't. He has been for runs before and they take about ten minutes. The parental rat-smelling radar knew something was up after 45 minutes, and after being lightly quizzed upon his return he was quizzed rather more the next morning. He can't lie to save himself so we figured it out pretty quickly. He had been to "visit" XXXX (a person of the female persuasion that I cannot name because information could be passed to the wrong persons and I have to, for some reason, protect the guilty). Friday night he wanted to go again, and against our better judgement we agreed, with a strict time limit (on the basis that knowing what was going on was better than subterfuge). This time limit was studiously ignored and breached by about two hours. Wandering the streets at 1am in the morning is not a good long term plan for young teenagers. The following morning he was rudely awakened (in many ways) and informed that such a blatant ignoring of the agreed terms was likely to cramp his lifestyle considerably. He was closely monitored on Saturday by Hannah and my mother while we were out. We face the moral dilemma that we knew what was going on, and that XXXX's parents did not (she was escaping after lights out). Informing them of the goings on is possibly slightly worse than not informing them, but if it was our daughter we would want to know. He wanted to repeat the exercise last night, we refused. Very tricky, but that is a major reason why we are not going to agree to these nocturnal walkabouts in future.

That's it for now.

Northland gets quite soggy, the Clarke children both snatch a draw from the jaws of defeat - 02/04/07

LOCAL NEWS

Big rain during the week in Northland with about three months worth of rain in a day and a half. The Stone Store was in trouble in Keri Keri, four double units were washed away near Haruru Falls, and large chunks of highway were under water. We got a bit of rain but not quite that much.

Forgot to mention the news last week about two Auckland high school girls who tested vitamin C in popular drinks and found very little in Ribena (a product that advertises blackcurrants as having four times the vitamin C of oranges). It is a product of large company GlaxoSmithKline. (while I type this bit in GMail I get adverts for cranberry juice on the side, very funny)

The Ribena thing stayed in the news all week. First we had news of it making the news overseas. Then we had the stories about the girls being suddenly famous. Then we had GSK's bollocks about the product being okay in Europe and it was a shelf life thing in the colonies. Then we had scientists pooh-poohing that theory. Meanwhile, everybody else was getting on the bandwagon testing products. There was no rat found in ratatouille, they found salmon in the salmon mousse but no moose, there were no babies in the baby carrots, no fish or fingers in fish fingers, and in one case they found no water in bottled water (it was later realised it was actually a water bottle, and empty).

A Waikato academic is being funded to the tune of $96,000 to study bogans (westies). Some people think this is not a good idea.

A 6yo girl was hit with a slug pellet from a ricochet (they say) which entered her chest and scratched the surface of her heart. She was in pretty bad shape and was helicoptered to Starship hospital. The individual who discharged the weapon was her 9yo brother. I don't see how a slug pellet could manage that, especially off a ricochet. The other interesting point about this is the parents seem to want to concentrate on their sick daughter and their probably distraught son and not spend their time talking with the media. They have now been labelled "media shy" (as compared to "sensible", "rational", and other words I would use).

A 13 year old petrol head was killed by a flying car at a speedway near Blenheim. People seem surprised when this happens. I am pretty sure I would not rely on chicken wire and would sit near the back. It is third fatality of a motor sport fan in NZ in a month.

Not sure how often I have mentioned the "anti-smacking" bill but we continue to hear about this far more than any reasonable would consider remotely interesting.

A school in Rotorua had a geyser erupt yesterday, up to 5 metres, but now bubbling away at less than a metre.

Meanwhile, four people died in a house fire in Christchurch this morning.

WORLD NEWS

Apart from the British troops captured in Iran, I don't think I've heard much at all.

REAL SPORT

Another tough game for Rory's senior team. They drew 3-3 with Mt Roskill. Rory scored a last minute goal to equalise, it was a very good goal under pressure at centre forward (two on him, head was under water a lot).

Rory's junior team failed to have an opposing team show up, so instead of playing Rangitoto Boys B, they played Rangitoto Girls A, who thumped them 5-0.

Not to be outdone, Hannah had a soccer friendly on Saturday. It was a mix of teams but most of her new team was there. They had a 3-3 draw, Hannah scored last goal to equalise. Rory refereed.

Rory had a social league game Sunday night. I don't know the score, I didn't go, I was tired.

Hannah has interschool cricket on Tuesday. Rory never played cricket for the school.

SPORT

Highlanders beat the Cheetahs 21-17, Hurricanes beat the Bulls 17-9, Blues beat the Chiefs 18-11, Crusaders beat the Waratahs 34-33 (so only just).

Liverpool surprised quite a few punters (well, Peter Crouch did I suppose) by beating Arsenal 4-1, Peter Crouch got three goals (I think he is rubbish for England but this was not a bad effort). Man Utd beat Blackburn 4-1 also. Man City beat Newcastle 1-0. Chelsea beat Watford unconvincingly 1-0 with a goal in the 90th minute.

England beat the giants of soccer, Andorra, 3-0 (although it was 0-0 at half time and the England crowd booed them off the field). Andorra is well known also for it's sweaters.

The Black Caps comfortably beat the West Indies in their first Super 8 round at the World Cup. It is going for another four weeks.

Samoa won the Hong Kong Sevens beating Fiji in the final.

MY SAD LIFE

I went to see the movie Hot Fuzz with Hannah on Saturday evening. We had to commit some subterfuge to get her in because theatres are now demanding photo ID (It was R13 and she is 12 years 6 months old). So we simply bought a ticket for a non-rated movie and went into the wrong theatre. How ridiculous. Why do they try so half-heartedly to enforce such an idiot rule? The movie itself was very good, we both enjoyed it, and it was the first time I think I have been to the movies with just Hannah.

We had a bit of a crisis on Tuesday with the untimely death of the washing machine. It was 14 years old so I suppose it had a good run. There was water everywhere in the laundry, which took a while to clean up. It was quite similar to the experience the week before in the bathroom.

Wednesday was a busy day. We got Rory's new bed, someone took the old bed, we got the new washing machine, and the old video recorder returned repaired. He was happy on Thursday night when computer, xbox, and cellphone privileges returned.

Because of the new bed, Rory needed to sort his room out and rearrange things. It took far too long as he kept getting "distracted". The Lego has now gone, consigned to storage in the garage (quite the end of an era), as has a lot of other stuff. The room is far less cluttered with bunk bed (he now has a trundler underneath his bed).

Inorganic rubbish is collecting on kerbsides around our suburb, and the awful kerb crawlers have come too. They wade through the rubbish, often making neat piles messy and pulling things to bits and leaving the bits to blow around (like insulation from a refrigerator near us, and we are going to try to empty a bean bag before that goes out to prevent it snowing in our street). We had a bit of a session on Sunday and cleared out a few things including a crappy set of drawers I have had in the garage that were left here by the previous owners (nearly 11 years ago).

The 7th of February marks Brett's birthday, as well as the big wedding. I need to work on my speech. It is also Easter this weekend so four day weekend should be nice (although three days of it are already booked up). If nothing else having two short weeks is nice.

1 April came and went, and despite some high drama on Friday we survived the first day of local and mobile number portability in New Zealand.

Rory has now started reading about Java programming and knows about as much as me now. We both need to do something constructive with it.

Nothing happening in the pots, the seeds are not germinating visibly. I think any assertions of me having green fingers relate solely to mould.

Bye for now