Weather has been pretty wet and wild for quite a few days now.
LOCAL NEWS
Paul Holmes faced the media on his daughter's drug charges later last Monday. I have to admit he handled it pretty well and seemed pretty much like any other Father.
A person died when a car skidded off a snowy road near Wanaka and fell 70m into the lake. Kathryn tried the same road shortly afterward and was turned back. We all think the danger was more for boating on the lake below the road more than driving on it. Kathryn got to stay on the side of the road in a cardboard box (well, almost). She made civilisation on Saturday. The snow was so bad flights were cancelled and the Winter Festival was postponed a week.
Another accident during bad weather, which was pretty funny, despite serious injuries was a guy driving out around banks peninsula near Christchurch came off the road and was down a bank for about ten hours, with a working girl he had just hired. I am not sure weather she charged overtime or he got a refund, but I bet he wasn't real happy telling everyone who she was.
Parents of a baby are disappointed they cannot call the child 4real. Births, Deaths and Marriages refuse to register any name beginning with a numeral. The parents have names lined up for the rest of their planned family - 4skin, 2stupid, 4play, 4sight, 3ply, 2hot4u, 4dummies, and 7iron (the father likes golf, too). Apparently the parents of conjoined twins wanted to give their babies one name, 4armed, which was consider to be in bad taste.
A 1.9 tonne piece of concrete sent an Auckland construction worker to meet his maker on Thursday.
News this week that qualifying standards to join the police have plummeted. Given apparent requirement for sex offences, this isn't surprising. Anything less than having done a 3-5 stretch is now okay.
A Polish immigrant has pleaded guilty to charges of some 400 robberies of cars in tourist destinations around the south island in three weeks. Sounds like he has an awesome camera collection and more passports than the Jackal. And apparently he can still apply to join the police.
Two 14 year old teenagers shot at police during a car chase before they were apprehended near Tauranga.
A clever hunter put his loaded gun in the boot of his car and shot himself in the shoulder. (imagine me shaking my head about now, and sighing)
A 61 year old man died at his son's 21st birthday party while trying to break up a fight. Booze culture is alive and well.
A survey was released today to say that Christchurch sex-workers are not any safer after law reform than they were before. The timing is somewhat ironic, after one of their number had the accident reported earlier in this section. I am not sure reform would prevent those sort of accidents.
We continue to hear about the power cut family. A story of typical Pacific Island cycle of financial ruin by borrowing money at silly rates for short term solution.
WORLD NEWS
The weather we have had in the last week or so visited itself upon Sydney first (we always get their cast-offs, it's not fair). My sister Penny had some excitement with water mixing with electricity in her shop, causing a fire that got interesting (do smoke-damaged flowers sell for less, or sell for more to people who like the smoke-smell, I wonder).
Australia is taking drastic measures to resolve issues with aboriginals, forcing expenditure on food and theoretically reducing child abuse in the Northern Territory.
The guy who went ballistic with a gun in Melbourne handed himself in after a few days.
REAL SPORT
We took the soccer team to an indoor venue for training on Thursday night, which they thoroughly enjoyed.
Hannah's polo team played the team Rory coaches, who were selected to be the second best team at Ponsonby. It was good natured, but one way. Final score 17-0.
Hannah's soccer was postponed, because of the hideous weather. This was a good thing because we had two key players unwell, but the weekend seemed so much quieter.
SPORT
The Warriors had another win, against Penrith (described as a team in crisis, which by definition must be self-evident because they lost to the Warriors). It was 54-14, which does reinforce the theory.
The Southern Sting beat the Northern Force in the final in a real cliff-hanger 50-49 in the last domestic netball league competition before we combine with Australia.
The All Blacks surprised everyone by coming back from 12-21 to win 26-21 at Durban against the Boks.
Team New Zealand finally had an America's Cup race, and lost it, on Saturday night. The tv news coverage included very drunk people telling us their views before and after. Not sure what that added to things, really. They won race two this morning so 1-1 now. Not sure what this means, but I suspect we could have been a little lucky in the second race. I wouldn't start buying coastal property just yet.
MY SAD LIFE
Among much trepidation with a mega-storm approaching, Rory went off on an overnight camp with school on Thursday night. Diana wasn't happy, not sure I was either. He was fine, and had a fun time. They actually gave them tents.
Diana had her birthday on Saturday, as expected. I am not going to say what she got from me (because it'll drive Brett bonkers not to know). We realised that it is now 20 years we have known each other, and she still has the tea pot I got her back then (I have this funny idea that birthday presents should be memorable, but after 20 years it's getting a little difficult). Ross, the Bambis, and Koos came over for dinner, was good to see them.
As mentioned earlier, Kath has been playing in the South Island, and is considering changing her name to Nanook of the South.
Hannah was home from school, sick for three days, definitely not herself, but she was bouncing back noticeably on Sunday. Bouncing is pretty much the perfect word to describe it. We took a ball down to the soccer field and she kicked a few. She wasn't too sick to cook, she made lemon meringue pie on Saturday, pancakes and caramel slice on Sunday.
Paul Grant is in San Diego now, got there yesterday, haven't heard from him yet, but presume it's all good. He was due to go sailing today.
Rory has announced he wants to move in to the sleep out. The problem is that the sleep out is where my office is, and shifting it would be a major exercise. The concept does have some merit, but I think requires consideration.
Rory continues to play with a program called Blender, which creates 3-D objects and renders them. He's producing a vast number of items. The program is quite technical, a little bit AutoCAD-like, with tons of keypresses for certain functions (with different functions on numeric keypad keys compared to numbers across the top of keyboard). I got him to talk me through doing something to see what it was like. This is the first non-game he's got to know and I think it is very useful. Just wish the kids would learn the basics in Excel.
The house near us that our neighbour Jim calls the crematorium is for sale. Diana went and had a look over the weekend. The people in there have been there the whole time we've lived here. We got a flyer the other day with house sales around here and I am beginning to think my estimate of the value of our house is probably well wrong. Not that it matters a lot.
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