Thank God it is Monday.
LOCAL NEWS
Plenty of snow this week, too much for skiing.
Cereal magnate Dick Hubbard has thrown his hat into the ring for the Auckland Mayoralty. He appears to have the support of the New Zealand Herald which is running stories about him every where. Given that neither of the other three seemed to be valid options, he could get my vote. He is a bit of a leftie, got some funny ideas, but seems like he might not be too dangerous.
News this week of a study of voter understanding of the MMP system. The Electoral Commission are concerned that few people know they get two votes, that the party vote decides the representation in parliament, and that the 5% threshold gives a party about six MPs. Well, frankly, if people don't understand this, they clearly aren't bright enough to be trusted with a vote at all. Apparently the understanding of the system has decreased by about 50% since the last election. Who was it that said that people vote for the government they deserve, well they were right.
A woman was killed by her own dog in Dunedin. She should have kept fish.
A postie went missing during a storm and was found dead near her submerged car in a swollen stream. I thought the creed said something like "Through rain, sleet, snow, and the dark of night, the mail must go through". Well, it didn't include storm. She was only 46.
There was a fire on a Waiheke Ferry last night, 300 people were taken off.
A recent survey on the ills of television and children were confirmed on Saturday when a television fell off a bookcase and hit a 10 month old in the head and killed him. The writer of a recent survey on the depth of shelves and dangling wires is also feeling vindicated. I now wait for someone to die whilst running with scissors.
Another survey this week says NZers are happier and living longer than we did ten years ago - even though most of us were around then as well.
A nasty weekend on the roads with ten people dying. This is surprising as most people were inside watching the Olympics all weekend.
WORLD NEWS
The discovery of John the Baptist's cave near Jerusalem is kind of interesting, but two news pieces seemed to suggest that baptism and Christianity were around before Jesus. That confuses me, a lot. Did I miss something at school?
Helen Clark, our beloved Prime Minister has been recognised as one of the world's most powerful women. She is the 43rd most powerful, in a list topped by US National Security adviser Condoleeza Rice. It seems that being Tony Blair's wife is enough to be rated 12th - more powerful because she sleeps with a PM, as compared to being one, while the Queen sits on her throne in 22nd place. Britney Spears is 2nd, Kylie 19th, and the hot one from that TV show was voted 5th. GW Bush came in 9th, because he throws like a girl. Interestingly, Helen isn't the only dead person on the list, Mother Theresa and Princess Diana made it as well, with Diana placing 14th. Who does these things? I think I am going to start doing some of my own and publicising them and see what happens.
REAL SPORT
At water polo practice on Tuesday, Rory was singled out for some sort of development thing, which is pretty cool. There are two others from his team as well. There was no game due to some competition at the pool.
Hannah played interschool soccer on Thursday. I was looking after two teams at once, trying desperately to remember 30 names with 29 that looked liked twins (two were twins, and the African boy in goal looked like the white boy that was goalie in the other team when they both had gloves on). Hannah was in Team A they won three and drew two, finished second. Team B won four and drew two and finished first equal. Neither team lost a game. There was no semi or final. They were pretty happy with that.
There were girls from Hannah's teams in at least three other teams and some others were playing netball which I never got a chance to even visit (games were alternating every 20 minutes for like three hours). At the end, the two Pt Chev teams played a friendly against each other (Rory joined in, they came after the speech thing was over) and used two balls at once. I don't know where the energy came from.
Hannah's team were up against a team that came second in grading and were fourth on the table. We got two ring-ins from the Div 2 team (we are Div 1) because a couple of our players were away. We really gave them a go, led 1-0 for a while, then let in a goal we shouldn't have. Half-time score was 1-1 and it stayed scoreless in the second half. Excellent result for the girls and again proved they can work very hard. The coach from the other team said they hadn't played anyone that physical. I don't know if that means my girls are rough or just committed.
Hannah then went and played for the Division 2 12th Grade Boys team again for half a game. She did a great job and showed some of the lads what they should be doing. The team lost 5-0 but only one of three goals in the half she played came around her side and that wasn't her fault.
Rory's team won at Pukekohe, 3-2, with Rory giving a huge effort in defence, heading a lot of high balls. He got player of the day and Diana thinks he richly deserved it. I really wish I could see him play more. He said he thought he had more energy because he hadn't played water polo the night before (which I think is very probably true).
One more soccer game left in the season for Rory and Hannah.
SPORT
I didn't even notice the Premiership had started last weekend. Man Utd lost last week to the Mincers, who won again this weekend and are top of the table. Man Utd beat giants Norwich 2-1. The Arse and Chelsea are top of the table already.
In the Olympics, New Zealand went through the same old "we haven't got a medal yet, Lesotho is doing better than us" thing for the first week. Finally, on Saturday, we had all five rowing teams that entered row in the finals. Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell did the business in the double sculls and got us on the board, as hoped, the other four didn't feature in the medals (which was a bit disappointing, you'd think one would have). Then, on Sunday, Sarah Ullmer broke the record set by another cyclist only minutes earlier and on Monday beat her in the final of the 3000m pursuit to get New Zealand a second gold and set the World Record again (our 33rd gold in history of the Olympics, which shows how rare they are for us).
In the tri-nations, which I basically had forgotten about, South Africa beat Australia and in doing so won the tri-nations, with the All Blacks coming last (it was all bonus points as everyone won their home matches this time).
Bay of Plenty successfully defended the Shield against Waikato, 26-20. Taranaki beat Southland 48-16 at home. Canterbury had a draw with North Harbour 43-43 at Jade. Auckland beat Northland 39-27, and Otago drew 16-16 with Wellington (what's with draws, this is rugby). Taranaki and Bay of Plenty are top of the table with two wins each.
THE BABY GEEK
Well, I went to Rory's speech final at school on Wednesday. He didn't seem to care if I went or not (Diana was working) and then the bugger went and won it. Honestly, I thought his was good, delivered well, but didn't really stand out. There were about four out of ten that I felt missed the mark with their subject matter, but the others were all pretty good. One girl did a speech on disgusting food (including fried ants, dog, and live monkey brains, I wanted to call out "don't forget puffins"). I was very pleased for Rory, it's really neat to get to be the best at something and he seemed quite overwhelmed. Lots of kids congratulated him, which was also nice. His friend Matthew (who won last year) came second, and a girl from his water polo team came third.
He went to the interschool champs the next day with Diana (she took the day off work), while we (Hannah and I) were at soccer. Ten schools were there, he came third, not a bad effort. The winner sang and danced and everyone gestured wildly (except Rory, they were told not to, just to just voice and facial expression) and many used cue cards (except Rory, again way they did it at school). He thought he deserved better than third, Diana seemed to mostly agree. He was one of only two boys in the ten finalists.
Thursday night he went to Mathex, a weird maths competition where you run somewhere with the answer, a combination of maths ability and running endurance. Diana took him. Hannah and I collapsed at home after soccer practice. Rory's team didn't place, the school that won practices all damn year.
MY SAD LIFE
We (Diana and I) don't have a life, we just exist for our children. Well, sometimes one does wonder how much you live your life vicariously through your children. I think it is more about not having time for your own life so you might as well enjoy what you do.
Diana disappeared for a girls dinner on Tuesday night with Katherine Smith. Must have been well-behaved because she was back quite early.
Hannah had a tap dancing exam on Sunday, so there have been extra practices and lots of noise coming from the lounge.
After the tap exam, we went out to celebrate as a family. We went ten-pin bowling, had two games. We used the bumpers on the gutters because Hannah was struggling. Diana still guttered quite a few times but perfected the bounce for a strike. Hannah won another soft toy on a machine after bowling, a Tigger, on her second try, very happy. Rory played on an old star wars machine that is his favourite and went further than we had seen before. Then went to dinner. First restaurant had no kids menu and we decided to give it a miss (Rory wasn't happy with selections, needs to be less fussy, but it was not a cheap restaurant so we didn't want to pay top dollar for him to eat half a meal. Instead we went to One Red Dog. Diana bumped into her friend Jackie (who is now pregnant, at 41, for the first time). Jackie did the obligatory "gosh, Rory, you look just like your father", which Rory is sick of (Oh boy, I used to get so sick of that myself). Rory ordered two kids meals and ate them both. Behaviour was reasonable through dinner, but once fed everyone started getting "bouncy". We got ice creams on the way home.
I think spring is coming because I went bonkers on Sunday, cleaning things. Was doing okay, then it all went horribly wrong. It was much like pulling a thread in shirt and unravelling the entire universe. I started by looking at cleaning out a cupboard that is full of all sorts of miscellany. Then I found a doorstop that hadn't been installed. Then I took that to the bathroom and realised the skirting had not been painted. Then I noticed it needed to have some holes filled. Then I looked at the whole doorjamb and figured I should really give that a coat too, so I should sand it. Whilst sanding I realised how bad it really was and so stripped the bloody thing (it must have had like 50 years of paint on it. I never put the doorstop on, and never tidied the cupboard (except for taking out the doorstop). After about two hours of hard slog I managed to finally undercoat the skirting and the doorjamb, and sweep up most of the fallout. There are a bunch of little "niggly bits" around doors and windows that I need to do this to. Hopefully I won't wait until next spring.
The tidying/cleaning thing continues. Diana is worried.
Charles, you rude bugger, you're nearly as bad a Koos.
Planning for our trip to US is not going very quickly, we are running out of time. We have bags for the kids now (they are notebook backpacks, but way cool with heaps of compartments.
Well, better go do some work. We are hoping for a quieter week this week.
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