Taranaki has a bad week, Gavin becomes a father, Hannah creates her own wind - 09/07/07

LOCAL

Finance Company Bridgecorp went into receivership on Monday, not a good look. We've had a few finance companies fail.

SAS soldier Willy Apiata was awarded the Victoria Cross, the first New Zealand soldier to get the award since the 2nd World War. You'd expect the most likely situation requiring bravery would be driving an army Unimog truck. Apiata did the classic hero dash 70 metres to rescue a wounded comrade over broken ground while under fire.

I failed to mention an incident where a cabinet minister was accused of smacking his child in a shopping mall. He pulled them away from something. Storm in a teacup.

We had some tornados on Wednesday in three different places in New Zealand, quite unusual. Then on Thursday Taranaki got nailed with many houses ripped to bits in a place that used to be called Oakura (it is a gaping wound now).

A teenager failed to get a strike when he skittled a group of cyclists in his car, only scoring three.

Weather has generally been pretty extreme. Lots of snow in the South (so Kathryn is going to Invercargill today, Nanook of the South returns), black ice, etc. Also a small flash flood in Taranaki over the weekend.

Exceedingly random bit of news is that some professor wants to increase the intelligence level of the population by putting contraception in the water. The theory being that the well-educated with have planned children, and those that aren't won't breed like rabbits. It's all very master-race like, and quite dubious.

WORLD NEWS

England continued to deal with the failed terror attacks.

Five people were kidnapped from a Nigerian oil rig. It was interesting because two of them are New Zealanders.

A squall hit a youth yacht race and capsized 90 boats, in Scotland (or somewhere in UK). That's a lot of people needing rescuing all at once.

Frank Bananarama continues to piss New Zealand off by calling us bullies and other names for reacting to his bully-boy tactics and responding to him expelling diplomats. Fiji needs us a lot more than we need them and I suspect considerably less people are visiting Fiji at the moment.

REAL SPORT

No real sport this week, but we got news of the U16 polo team for Rory. He is a floater. This means he will play in the A team and the B team, and will probably go to Nationals. This is a very good result for him as he will be U16 next year also and playing for two teams will give him more game time.

SPORT

Wallabies beat Springboks 25-17 in Sydney.

Federer won Wimbledon for the fifth time.

Kimi Raikonen won the British Gran Prix, Hamilton came third.

MY SAD LIFE

The kids, being on holiday, did various things. Hannah stayed away one night, had Josie stay another. Rory stayed at Cassidy's for a mini-party on Friday night, going to sleep around 6:30am.

Karma was in play this week. Hannah bought a raffle ticket off Josie, who was raising money for her trip to Hong Kong. Hannah won two passes to Ski Planet (indoor skiing thing). Hannah took Josie with her to Ski Planet on Friday, and Josie's Dad took them. They were there for eight hours. They got wind burn, indoors, from skiing down the hill so fast there was wind where there should be none.

Maria Jean Cosh was born at 12:30am Sunday morning weighing 3.6kg and 52cm long. Congratulations to Gavin and Yana. Gavin sounded very happy when he called.

Sunday was also Heidi's birthday.

Saturday was the 4th anniversary of my Father's passing.

Diana, Hannah, and I took Pippy for a walk on Takapuna beach on Sunday because Diana needed beach time. The Goodins are not well, so I think they were quite happy for her to be walked.

Rory and the gang filmed their commercial for a competition this week (the gang being Raf, Cassidy, and Maddie). They were woefully disorganised, but seemed to enjoy themselves. This week they have to figure out how to edit it all.

Work on shifting me and Rory between his room and my office began in earnest over the weekend. We have created some space in my office, disassembled some shelves, and he has created some space in his room by filling the lounge (Diana not too impressed about that). The garage is also accommodating some of the fallout. It's all a bit like a puzzle where you have to move pieces around to make room (you know, those 2D 4x4 with one square missing that make pictures and things).