Not as long as it should be, be grateful.
LOCAL NEWS
A young man disappeared, who's car was found burned out a long way from home. We had vacuous questions of his father like "Are you worried?". Then he showed up in Wellington on a bus. Police charged him with wasting police time.
TV3 have had a battle over advertising on Sunday mornings because three very big world cup rugby games are on when advertising is banned on Sunday mornings. They have tried to side-step it a little but they are pushing their luck. The reality is the fine is considerably less than the advertising revenue. Apparently New Zealand is only country in the world with an ad ban on Sunday mornings, and exemption is possible but not granted. Of course, now, nobody cares.
Continuing on the police shooting people theme, they had a Rottweiler set upon them this week, and fired 12 shots at it, all of which missed. This time, they were hassled for being bad shots. Suggestions that a taser would have been better used seem ridiculous given that they are single-shot devices that are less accurate than pistols (so how many tasers would they have needed?).
Weather caused some issues Tuesday and Wednesday. We seemed to just stay ahead of it, thankfully. We were about the fourth to last car to get out of Milford Sound, the road stayed closed for about two days afterwards.
A maori woman is trying to get her husband declared "taonga" which would allow him to stay in the country. A taonga is like a national treasure, covered by the Treaty of Waitangi, and would be exempt from deportation. It's all quite odd, he's been done by police for domestic violence, the immigration people seem to take a dim view of the whole thing.
The national Rock, Paper, Scissors champion was found. He is off to Canada for the world champs. Sheesh. At least if he wins, we might have something to be happy about.
WORLD NEWS
The rather belated inquest into Diana and Dodi's deaths has begun. All a bit old, it is ten years since it happened, but we are getting hammered with updates daily. Finding relevence is quite a struggle.
REAL SPORT
Rory's team at U18 Nationals battled away, although losing 4-5 to Marist B was their best result before playoffs. Rory scored their first goal, which was cool. In the end they came tenth out of, um, ten. It was okay, though. I think Rory learned quite a bit and it was certainly a good workout.
This coming weekend we have an intermediate tournament, the first U14A girls game, and three college junior games. Not busy, noooo, not busy.
SPORT
Well, the rugby world cup is over before it really started for the All Blacks. The first time they played a semi-decent team they've lost. Aussie are out too. That's all I have to say.
Auckland beat Taranaki and the Magpies (Hawkes Bay) beat Waikato 38-35 in the provincial rugby. Finding it in the papers is not easy.
Arsenal beat Sunderland 3-2, Blackburn beat the Brummies, Man Utd thumped poor old Wigan 4-0.
MY SAD LIFE
Well, we travelled to Te Anau, went to Milford Sound on Tuesday, and came home Wednesday. The trip to Te Anau was uneventful, we had time to wander around it a bit. We taught the kids to play 500, which was interesting. I told them how my Uncle Chris taught me, and how he reached across the table, grabbed me by the collar, and said, slowly, but quite forcefully "Why didn't you call your ace?". We ended up playing 500 in many exotic places, while we waited for boats, planes, and so forth.
The trip to Milford Sound was 116ks, which they warned is would take two and a half hours. It didn't, but we got snowed on through the pass which was a bit exciting. We stopped to see Keas (big native parrots, famed for eating cars) on the way down. We then spent a couple of hours cruising the sound, seeing lots of rock and waterfalls (there are 13,000). On the return leg we went into this deep water observatory thing that lets you see creatures that normally live a lot deeper in the water (but can survive only 5 metres down because of the light filtering effect of the layer of fresh water on top). While on the cruise we found out that the road out was closing at 5:30, so I was pretty anxious to get out of dodge. We made it without too many problems, but it was still snowing up at the Homer tunnel, and there was a lot more snow around as we came through. It was also snowing in more places than on the way out to Milford Sound. We made it back safely, and saw only one car coming the other way the entire return trip.
Wednesday we awoke to find it snowing outside the motel and Hannah went out to frolic. There was considerably more snow in evidence along the return journey to Queenstown. Bad weather caused delays in flights so we played 500 in the airport while we waited for our plane to land. We haven't played since we got home, which is a shame (but then again, I am not sure I've seen Hannah more than 15 minutes at a stretch since we got back).
We got back late Wednesday night, and Rory started playing in U18 Nationals the next day. He was in the B team, mostly younger players, and they were not expected to win many games.
We spent most of the weekend going to pools. We did see the Bambis on Sunday in between games. Life is kind of returning to normal, but Hannah leaves on camp tomorrow so house will be quiet.
Rob
RUGBY, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING
I didn't want to harp on about it but some things need to be said. Ever since the build up and disappointment in 1999, also against France, I have never checked in emotionally to the All Blacks and the World Cup. The national approach to it is excessive, all media convince us every four years that we will win it, and then tell us how distraught we are afterwards. Today, the newspapers are unreadable, the breakfast shows (both of them) are unwatchable. Post match analysis is not wanted, not by me, and I don't think I am alone. I don't need people telling me how upset I am, because I am not. Sooner or later they (the press) need to realise that they do not remotely speak for all of us and an ever decreasing percentage actually care about rugby at any level.
That'll do for now, sermon ends.
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