Fatal cricket in Western Australia, while the Pakistanis work on their fatal politics and New Zealand plays death toll racing - 31/12/07

Farewell, goodbye, and amen, 2007 is basically knackered and we have to get used to a new date. I hate this interim period where you talk about "this year" and nobody knows whether you mean this year we are in or this coming year. We handle tomorrow and yesterday okay, you’d think we'd be able to cope.

LOCAL NEWS

It was a white Boxing Day in Upper Hutt, one person reckoned the hail was knee-deep. That's a heck of a lot of hail.

We seemed to have more drownings that road fatalities, meanwhile people seemed to get more carried away overseas (see below).

Four men tried to drown themselves in an over full IRB with a 2hp motor that conked out as the Waikato river was pushing them towards the bar. They had no life jackets or anything. One of their rescuers thought they were the stupidest people he'd seen in 30 years of rescuing. They were so embarrassed they failed to collect their sick boat, although it was probably stolen.

A clever 25 year old woman climbed a 1.8 metre fence, jumped in a covered swimming pool, and drowned herself. I think that makes the seventh drowning since Christmas Day. The road toll is slightly ahead at eight. Could be an interesting contest.

The New Years honours have been handed out. They are dull as ever, and all the sort of people you'd think had already got one. It seems that you get one if you were a politician or have been in the public eye for some other reason. Stupid concept.

A security review has revealed that Helen Clark's house has been tagged while under observation from the secret service and burglars hid on her section when being chased after being caught in the act. Good stuff.

Novovirus has hit 30 scouts at a jamboree in Christchurch. That would be a lot of fun. Camping AND rampaging disease. Wouldn't want to be on latrine duty there. Meanwhile, Legionella has been detected at a couple of Auckland buildings.

WORLD NEWS

A beach cricket game in Perth got pretty serious when someone murdered another player.

In Seattle, Washington, someone went postal and took out six people. Well, technically, one of the victims was a postal worker so the murderer went for A postal and took out a few others on the way.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Friday could spell chaos in Pakistan. It gave us plenty of news for a few days.


SPORT

Well, the Black Caps won the first ODI against Bangladesh and then did so again in the second, although Duckworth Lewis got involved I don't think it really changed the result. Last game today.

Meanwhile, the boxing day test in Melbourne was over in four days and the Aussies showed that they are the best and 2nd is daylight. India didn't stand a chance. It has to be pretty boring for Australians if they know they are going to win (15 in a row now).

Chelsea had a 4-4 draw with Villa on Boxing Day, three players were red-carded, Chelsea won 2-1 on red cards. Man Utd beat Sunderland 4-0, Wigan beat Newcastle 1-0, Spurs beat Fulham 5-1 and Liverpool scraped home 2-1 over Derby. Arsenal had a 0-0 draw with Portsmouth (think it was Portsmouth).

Over the weekend, Spurs continued their high scoring theme with a whopping 6-4 win over Reading. Man Utd shocked everyone (who cared) by losing 1-2 to West Ham, after being 1-0 up, Chelsea beat Newcastle 2-1, and Arsenal beat Everton 4-1 in a game with ten men on each side.

MY SAD LIFE

Christmas passed pretty quietly around our place. In fact the whole week has been pretty quiet. Rory disappeared to Coromandel with Maddie on Thursday. Diana sent him a text saying "you having fun? You eaten all their food yet? Been on a blo-cart? Missing us?". The reply was "Yes. No. No. Naaah." Such eloquence. I am sure food is lasting longer around here. There was discussion of him sleeping in tent with Maddie. I am pretty surprised her parents allowed it but realistically I am not sure I would want to share a room with him, and he's my son.

Hannah and I have been swimming pretty regularly, went four times this week. In the heat it is quite nice to cool off, and it has been quite hot.

We have managed to see some people this week, like the Bambis, Goodins, and Coshs. In between we've been doing a few jobs around the house, nothing very inspirational. Diana and I did manage a walk around the Western Springs lake on Thursday. Diana has been trying to fumigate Rory's room so that it doesn't reek like teenage boys armpits. I am not sure that is remotely feasible.

One thing that wasn't humdrum was that we did go explore a large Russian sailing ship Pallada that was in port, it was big (holds passengers and crew of about 180). There wasn't much info about, other than some about the Pacific Fishery in Cyrillic (so, pictures, basically). The Soren Larson was parked next to it and completely dwarfed by it.

Diana and Hannah went to a movie, while I went to the main city library. The Monty Python sketch comes to mind. They have rearranged things and now the novels take up a tiny amount of space and it feels like they have done little more than squeeze them in, afterthought style, after they made room for the teens, kids, computer games, dvds, magazines, and display of native nose rings from upper Gambia. "Funny, you've got a lot of books here"………….

Diana did buy a couch on Boxing Day, two actually, but they are both the same. They arrive later this week. All part of the vicious circle of death that was started by getting the new table, because nothing matches. The next item needing replacing in the coffee table. I am really not looking forward to finding out what else doesn't go.

Hannah bought a bikini this week, which is a bit of a difference from what she wears swimming at the pool (two pairs of togs, it's a polo thing, her and Rory both feel undressed if they wear only one, even for training or just swimming). She is cleaning the cars in it as I write this.

We leave for a holiday on Friday, I am hoping I can get connect to outside world to send next Monday's edition. I may have got around to New Year's resolutions by then.

Haven't heard from Jono yet, where are you, you bugger? Come see the new couches (they are now arriving today).

Paul's still in Singapore, and very quiet.

Parkinson's sufferers feel at home in Gisborne, Hannah gets surprised - 24/12/07

LOCAL NEWS

Sizable quake near Gisborne on Thursday night was the answer to all the prayers of local news services experiencing pre-Christmas lethargy and a paucity of actual news (which doesn't normally stop them). Couple of buildings collapsed, one elderly lady died. There were a couple of aftershocks over a couple of days, one was big but not that big.

Nasty tourist bus crash up north where a bus load of oldies got rolled by an out of control dune buggy, no fatalities but not a good end to a day out.

The dreaded electoral reform act was passed into law. The Herald continues to say how bad it is. At first impression it doesn't seem to be a biggie, but it's not good.

A survey shows the majority of apprehended felons have dodgy substances in their bloodstream. Hardly surprising. I thought the theory was people mostly did burglary to fund drug habits?

The local Burger King got smacked for showing a ceramic coffee cup in their advertisements but supplying coffee in a paper cup. Good job. Kind of funny, when you think about it. If they never serve it in a proper cup then the ad is a complete misrepresentation.

We've had a flurry of "shame it was at Christmas" stories. Dumping kittens or losing a loved one in a car accident is not worse at Christmas, it's bad regardless. How come nobody cares when it happens at Easter or on Queen's Birthday? It's just vacuous and repetitive.

A gang of badly behaving santas forced a cinema to close in Christchurch. Terrible thing, giving Santa a bad name (remember Santa is an anagram of Satan).

WORLD NEWS

We had a weird story about how the Queen is now the oldest Monarch that England has ever had but she must have started late because she has about eight years to get the longest reign.

SPORT

The cricket happened. We don't discuss it. Aussie are good. New Zealand are not. Why have any coverage of it at all? Why even play the game, we know they are crap. Now we have Bangladesh coming. Not surprisingly they beat New Zealand in a 20/20 game. If we lose to them can we stop having so much coverage of the cricket?

Liverpool had a 4-1 win over Portsmouth for Christmas, Arsenal beat Spurs 2-1, Man Utd beat Everton 2-1 and Chelsea snuck past Blackburn 1-0.

MY SAD LIFE

Hannah had her graduation on Wednesday, her last day as an intermediate school kid. They had the graduation dance afterwards, and she got dressed up for the occasion. There were lots of tears, the crocodile was exhausted. I helped her find shoes on Tuesday, but I don't think she liked them.

Speaking of shoes, we also got some shoes for me. They are pretty far out, Nike Air Force Ones in two tone brown and orange. Ten things you can say about them:
- if I walk through vomit, it won't show on the shoes, even if there is diced carrots in there (which is could because they can induce vomiting and are basically a cure for not being bulemic)
- at least nobody will think I am gay, gay people have taste
- the advantage of being tall is I am a long way from the shoes
- they came with free sunglasses, ear plugs, and a health warning
- I can leave my fly undone and nobody will notice
- I did try to donate them to the salvation army, but they turned me down
- Somewhere, there is a blind person that is missing their shoes
- If I leave them in the sun, they should fade sufficiently in 18 months so that I could leave the house in them
- I can leave them anywhere and the risk of them being stolen is zero (although there is a very high risk they could be binned)
- If they were a horse, they would have been shot
- At least when I wear them people know to not ask me for fashion advice

Thursday night, Hannah had a surprise birthday party. What's that, you say? Her birthday was actually three months ago? That's the perfect way to ensure it's a surprise. We've been busy, okay? We took her to Prego, our favourite restaurant, sat down, then her friends popped out of nowhere. We left them to it, they had dinner together. We sat at another table, the other side of a chimney so we weren't hovering (couldn't even see them). The waiter kept us informed, which was exceedingly useful (in terms of how they were going with mains etc) and he passed messages to them (like that they could have hot chocolates with their dessert). He also told us that Hannah had ordered a latte and we got it modified to decaf. I think they really enjoyed it, probably first time any of them had been to dinner without an adult at the table. We left the restaurant about ten minutes before them, bumped into Allan and Jaqui who were celebrating their 32nd wedding anniversary (32 years, crikey). We returned to pick them up and take them home. I think it was unusual enough to be considered a good event. They then stayed over night and proceeded to use each other as Barbie dolls and did each others hair.

Friday night we staggered up to the local garage for the Christmas party. Rory brought Maddie, Raf, and Cassidy, although they were a bit nervous about all the grown ups and disappeared. Then they showed up finally, had three beers each (not large ones, but they inhaled them and they were 6.3%, made by local brewer who we've known for a long time) and disappeared again. Graham Brazier sang some songs, which makes sense because what else do you do with songs? (apart from write them and download them)

We went to another local barbecue on Saturday night with some of the regulars, mostly ex-Rangitoto College people. Went to see some lit up houses on the way home, which were nearly as impressive as the much vaunted Franklin Road in Ponsonby, but less crowded and faster.

It was Jono's birthday on Sunday. I thought it sucked having a birthday in early December, but on Christmas Eve Eve is worse.

Brett is off to Truk for a diving holiday.

Funny how things change. Wrote the bit up top about things happening at Christmas and then Mum's friend Sue Casey died on Sunday. She'd been fighting a losing battle for a while, but it's still pretty sad. Just tricky with Christmas organising funerals.

A quiet weekend without Hannah in the house - 17/12/07

Is it just me or has bugger all happened in New Zealand this week?

LOCAL NEWS

A hair salon had a car driven by an elderly woman come through the shop window, nobody was hurt. They thought it was a mirror breaking before they saw the car in an unexpected place.

Convicted triple murderer William Bell got the bash in prison, and headed for hospital. Then turned out that it was an escape attempt, except his accomplice was waiting with weaponry at the wrong hospital, and the injuries were just a little too convincing. All quite bizarre, really. How they found a woman with a gun at North Shore hospital, I don't know.

Been some weird story about New Zealand First political party donated money to Starship but not sure how or why because it was a fine for election spending so I don't understand why they could give it to any old recipient. Starship gave it back. It's all quite confusing.

Two recent political polls show National are ahead of Labour, it's not really surprising. Labour have done their dash, too many things have really pissed people off.

A man died when a trench collapsed on him. Why do they ever get in them?

WORLD NEWS

Lots of coverage of a sentence handed down to nine men who raped a ten year old girl. They were all aboriginals, and most were also below the age of consent. No custodial sentences were given but some were given suspended sentences which required good behaviour for a year or so.

Oil spill in South Korea has been an environmental disaster, the cause was a real cockup too.

The Bali climate change conference was the biggest oxymoron of the decade. Thousands of people flying there to reduce emissions, sheesh.

The Spice Girls are playing in England. Many feared the reunion would happen, and it has. Their UK appearance has been increased from one to sixteen concerts. So much for reducing emissions. They were the first band in UK to get a gong from the Queen for their services to music for breaking up. I wonder is she will want it back?

Some odd news about Terri Irwin and Australia Zoo being in legal proceedings, not sure if it is bollocks or she's been naughty. Crikey!

REAL SPORT

Hannah had six polo games at the National tournament. General feedback is that she played pretty well. They won their first game beating Maranui 8-2, lost their second to Tauranga 4-6, drew the third 3-3 against Marist, beat North Harbour 12-4, Mountfort Park 8-1, and Rotorua 6-4. This put them 5th, which isn't bad I guess for a pretty young team, six of the eleven players will be there again next year.

The highlight for Hannah was being named as a trialist for the New Zealand under-15 girls team, thirty girls were named so there is a bit of a way to go but it is still quite an honour, especially as she will be u-15 for another year after this one.

Meanwhile the boys top team was expected to repeat the gold medal win from last year with five of the team from last year coming back. They had a shock loss in the semi-final, so ended up coming third.

Also, Hannah's other club team are playing in the B Nationals, and doing very well, having conceded two goals in their three games so far and scored about 40. Final is tomorrow.

SPORT

The Black Caps received an old fashioned towelling from the Aussies in a 20/20 game. Sportscasters tried to convince us that we had a chance but it was never going to happen. I stick to my previous view that they are underprepared and undercapable. We then lost the first ODI, then rain saved us in the second on Sunday. In South Africa they had an ODI shortened to 13 overs, how stupid.

Robbie Deans was confirmed as the Wallabies coach. I have a bad feeling about this. It made the news, a lot, before and after.

Wigan v Blackburn was a heck of a match, Wigan won 5-3, one guy red carded and two hat tricks. Man Utd beat Liverpool 1-0, didn't think they would win. Arsenal beat Chelsea 1-0.

MY SAD LIFE

Rory had activities days this week, not sure why they just don't send the kids home. He did paintball and windsurfing for two days. On a third day he went to the beach. Friday was prize giving, and what a total and utter waste of time that was (see below for general moan on the subject).

Hannah left for Wellington on Wednesday. I did not. Long story, but politics is completely lame and doesn't belong in sports clubs and I wasn't going to fork out $500 so someone could avoid offending someone else. Given that the potential offendee is largely offensive, it seems all the more ridiculous. This gave me more time at home than I was expecting, and was possibly a good thing. Hannah seemed to more than cope (like, I am not sure she would have noticed if I was there).

Rory and Maddie have been spending quite a lot of time together, but she was away in Christchurch for a wedding this weekend so he was at a bit of a loose end. This meant we dragged him along to Koos and Julie's barbecue on Saturday night, and he actually enjoyed himself. It was good to see everyone. Rory drove out there, actually got him doing a bit of driving over the weekend.

I mentioned the prizegiving earlier. Basically about 66% of the junior school got a prize. They called out each kids name (in alphabetical order), while they walked up they read out what they got prizes for (so if more than one, they got them all at once) and then they sodded off. So rather than calling out prize then winner, it was vice versa, which just seemed weird. The other problem was that some kids seemed to get a ton of prizes (Rory got four, three achievement in maths, media, and PE and application in English, application means effort, and god knows how he got the effort one because I am not sure there was a lot of effort involved) and others (one girl we know who is exceedingly hard working and talented) got nothing. So while they devalue the whole prize thing there is enough of a vestige of recognition to piss off those that have been weirdly unlucky. What a stupid concept. I have just about decided that prize givings are completely outmoded.

Saw Matt & Kristy on Sunday. Matt's cat Entrée died this week, she was a funny old thing, tended to moan a fair bit. Seemed quiet without her.

Hannah has graduation, prize giving, and a dance thing this week, when she returns from Wellington today. Rory has nothing at all, which is good because he needs to do some Christmas shopping.

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of us buying our first house. This is also the case for Ross and Kath who moved in to their first house the same day as us (well duh). I am not sure how this is possible because none of us are old enough for this.

Picked Hannah up from the airport. She was pretty tired, but pretty happy.

Lots of people leaving on an unplanned basis and both sides of water polo finals - 10/12/07

LOCAL NEWS

Double murder accused Chris Kahui was not wanted in a town away from Auckland when released on bail, again. He's not Mr Popularity.

A fourth person died from the motorcycle versus campervan crash last week. The Austrian driver of the campervan pleaded guilty to six charges. I wonder how many motorcycles you have to hit at once to get a strike?

Nicky Watson's dog has been found, although it is no longer alive. A sad end to a sad story.

The body in the suitcase guys got 18 1/2 years each.

The housing price boom appears to be over, with an actual drop in the average price of a house reported in November. It's long overdue.

A large sailing boat was missing on a trip from New Caledonia to Auckland with ten people on board. Wasn't looking good, but they found it safe and sound.

A 13 year old was killed by a car near Ohinewai.

An experienced female diver died in a simple dive, having done everything right. They don't know why.

Graham Henry was reinstated as All Black coach. I think it is a mistake. Robbie Deans is now expected to go to the dark side. This is also not good.

There were two fatal stabbings and a murder within an hour over the weekend, including one guy on his birthday. Quite bizarre.

Interesting set of conflicting stories this morning. Hydro-lake levels in South Island running low, and heavy rain warning for Fjordland.

WORLD NEWS

It is two months since Steve Fossett disappeared. Guess they won't find him. I am quite surprised they haven't. Perhaps he was abducted by aliens. It just went awful quiet, so I decided to check it out and there has been nothing for a while.

The teacher jailed for her students name a bear Mohammed was freed early. She really is a silly woman and her daughter looks like that guy from Little Britain.

Some woeful survey by AOL has labelled Pamela Anderson as the sexiest woman ever, what an awful waste of carbon emissions.

The mass shooting in Omaha, Nebraska raises an interesting question. If it happens often enough to become commonplace, it won't be news, and the perpetrators won't be famous. Like streakers. Wonder if not reporting it would work?

REAL SPORT

Relatively little sport this weekend. We did go to Tauranga for two games on Saturday, this was for Div B for Hannah. They won their semi-final 7-0 and their final 7-0. The final was Waitak B versus Waitak C, which was pretty unusual (Rory played in a B v C semi final a few years back where C just managed to beat B, but that was even more extraordinary and they got thumped in the final). Hannah scored one goal as goalie in the second game (putting the team 2-0 up, in dying seconds before half time, giving them a bit of breathing room) and another when out in the field in the final. Girls scoring goals from goal is exceedingly uncommon at that age. They conceded one goal in the whole competition, about nine or ten games.

Didn't go so well at the A finals on Sunday. They lost 1-3 in the first game and 0-3 in the second game. They were missing a key player, but it shouldn't have made that much difference. Hannah did pretty well in goal, making a number of saves but it is hard to win two games when your team scores only score one goal. The difference between the A and B results is marked, I suppose it is the calibre of the opposition, but you have to wonder how they would do against each other.

So Hannah finished the weekend having won both games in one playoff and none in the other. At least she got a medal for the wins.

SPORT

Still bugger all sport out there at the moment. Because of the World Cup there isn't any end of year tour to Europe for Southern rugby teams. Not that I would watch the rugby, anyway. But let's face it the cricket isn't great, either.

Middlesbrough beat Arsenal 2-1, Man Utd beat Derby 4-1, Newcastle had a win (2-1 over the Brummies), Liverpool lost 1-3 to Reading, Chelsea beat Sunderland 2-0.

MY SAD LIFE

My birthday was a bit of a non-event. Business as usual, really, other than some nice emails. Didn't even manage a lunch or anything. Did have nice dinner though.

Elsie, Diana's Mum, came over this week. She's being a guinea pig for an arthritis drug, so they had to give her a full medical exam. They were terribly worried that they couldn't find her medical records at the hospital, but it turns out she doesn't have any. They wanted a list of the drugs she's on but she isn't on any (except for the arthritis in one knee). She's doing pretty well for 85. They were pretty surprised she had no medical history to review and the last time she was in hospital was giving birth to Diana.

I got a toaster for my birthday, it is about two steps away from being a talkie toaster like in Red Dwarf. It has an LCD display, beeps when done, and has it's own IP address and blue tooth (okay, that bit is a lie, but just about).

Plans for the trip to Wellington need to be underway, as Hannah and I leave on Wednesday (back next Monday).

Ollie has been a right pain in the rear in a number of respects, he caught three birds this week, and a skink. He has also been waking us up in the night.

The trip to Tauranga was pretty smooth but five plus hours driving in one day is a bit much (although I know Ross and Kath do half that every day going to work).

This weekend just gone was the anniversary of the chlorine poisoning affair. The weekend before was Gavin and Yana's first wedding anniversary (the 1st December I think). Maria is making early crawling attempts, she is five months old.

We seem to be having sewerage issues again, when it rains it is worse. It's not good. In fact, it's no go. The plumber has just been, much to my relief (read in to that whatever you may). We just can't tell if we have a long term problem, but we are all go again (yay).

Rory had the rest of his exams this week. He did well in maths, but got marked pretty savagely in English (got an "achieved" for one question because he chose a movie that wasn't on the list of two that wasn't actually in the question but stated in class when he wasn't there, he got "excellence" for the other two questions, and that is a bit of a crock). The NCEA style marking gets a Gay+ from me, I just don't see how people can get something out of "Merit" and "Excellence", what's wrong with 83%?

I swam 4ks this week. Haven't been swimming enough lately because of various things getting in the way so been sneaking off during the day, because things are quietening down for the end of the year. I think I am back in the zone, can knock off 50 lengths in just under half an hour. It was a struggle a couple of weeks ago.

Hannah has about four days left of being an intermediate kid. She has orientation at the new school tonight. I will attend to wave water polo flag as we need a bit of a recruitment drive.

Motorcycle gang takes on campervan and comes second, knives in the playground, the end of intermediate polo - 03/12/07

Had a few non-stories in the news this week

LOCAL NEWS

Well, late Monday night police had found a body in Christchurch. They took a while to confirm the identity but everyone knew who it was going to be. Then they apprehended someone and charged them with Emma Agnew's murder despite not naming the body, so we worked that bit out.

Meanwhile, fire-fighters found an elderly woman bound hands and feet in a burning house. Not nice. Police reckoned it look a professional crochet circle hit.

A real estate agent got stalked after someone took a liking to her. Can't say many people are too concerned. Real estate agents are scum. Sure, it's not nice, but if you are going to put about a photo-shopped photo of yourself and a mobile number you are really making it easy. I feel like we are stalked by the whole bloody industry with all the dodgy personalised messages they send us.

We are having a run on incidents with drink driving mums being apprehended with 1-6 toddlers unbuckled in the car. About four so far. Funny how news media latch on to themes.

The step-daughter of clothing designer Trelise Cooper has been done for using P. Yet another celeb offspring story. We are still getting Millie Holmes things now and again.

Cleavage legend Nikki Watson has lost her Chihuahua. This made a prime time news, where she was interviewed live (although live is not really apt given that she is clearly not far from brain death). She said she must have called out for it a million times. "You're hoarse?" says the interviewer. "No, my dog" she replied. Very sad. A t-shirt saying "All this and brains too" would be illegal for her to wear under the trade descriptions act.

Helen Clark was sprung texting during a speech by the Queen. Not good form, exceedingly embarrassing in fact. However, her polling with youth increased because a) she was cool enough to be able to text, and b) she was cool enough to "dis" the Queen. But let's face it, Helen seems to be pretty sure that she is the most important person on the planet so I can't see her being too concerned either way. She has since denied the whole thing and it has died off a bit.

The electronic media let themselves down this week by reporting that 0800 DAY OFF was all the IRD staff had to do to get a day off. Meanwhile, everyone got told that they still had paperwork to complete when they returned to work so the whole thing was a load of bollocks.

A knife incident at Hannah's school was reported in the paper on Saturday. He was threatening to use it on a girl at school on Friday. He also posted threatening messages on Bebo pages of two other girls, including Hannah. Both Hannah and the other girl were at polo on the day on the event. He has been expelled, but he will be attending Hannah's school next year.

A two year old drowned in a public pool in Auckland. I would personally like to see the adult that was supposed to be supervising the child be charged, but suspect that won't happen. There are signs around every pool about ages of kids at which they must be monitored by a parent or person over certain age. I am surprised it doesn't happen more often.

Nasty accident with campervan and a bunch of motorcyclists. Three died, several were injured.

10 medals, including nine Victoria Crosses, were stolen from Waioru War Museum. Pretty cynical theft, not very nice. Now being described as a crime against the nation.

WORLD NEWS

Some stupid woman was jailed for 15 days for letting her students call a teddy bear Mohammad in an Islamic country. Why the students were not charged, I don't know. She wrote a letter to the parents telling them, silly cow.

Friday was international computer security day. Not sure why we need one and if anyone cares. Meanwhile an New Zealander was revealed to have been part of a botnet scam ring that has cost people $26m. We are so proud.

REAL SPORT

We had another weekend with plenty of sport. I won't call it big because that would suggest it was more than the weekend before or after and that might not be true. It started Thursday morning and finished Sunday. We drew our first game, lost the second two, which put us out of contention for the championship and we qualified bottom of our group. We then proved that our group was pretty tough by beating the bottom two of another group then beating the top qualifier from the other side of the draw to make the final against a team we lost to in group play. We managed to reverse the previous result beating them 2-1 to win the A Grade plate. It showed that our group was a pretty tough group to be in if the bottom qualifier could beat everyone else from the bottom half of all four groups. Shame we didn't get a crack at anyone else in top half of the other groups.

So, that's the end of Hannah's intermediate polo career. It is likely Rory will be coaching the top team at Ponsonby next year, so it is not off the radar completely.

Final junior high school games were on Sunday night. Avondale defaulted midweek so the boys didn't have a game. Then MAGS couldn't field a team so the girls won by default as well. Disappointing but low stress.

So, only eight games this weekend, and I think Hannah has about four next weekend which is practically nothing, although two are in Tauranga.

SPORT

The biggest sport this week was the David Beckham led LA Galaxy against the local Phoenix team. Over 31,000 people attended. LA Galaxy won 4-1 but I don't think anyone cared about the result. Becks was in the news all week.

The Black Caps confounded everyone by levelling the series by winning the second ODI quite comfortably. They then lost the third, but not ignominiously.

Liverpool smacked Bolton 4-0, Spurs lost to Birmingham 2-3, with Robbie Keane scoring both goals then getting red carded so he did the classic hero to zero thing. Chelsea and Arsenal had wins, Man Utd play Fulham tonight.

MY SAD LIFE

On Tuesday, we wiped our mortgage. We still have an overdraft, but there is no longer a mortgage being paid all the time. It was pretty cool. About three weeks before the 20th anniversary of us buying our first house. Pretty scary to think it has been hanging over our heads that long. We also expect the OD to grow when we do things like replace the roof, if a contractor ever shows up to give us a quote. We got a letter from the bank, and then two days later they wanted to give us visa cards, which seemed kind of ironic.

Rory sat his NCEA Level 1 Science exam on Wednesday. Who knows how it went. Not sure he is very good at studying. No idea who he gets that from.

Another first for Rory. He cut himself shaving. Although he cut his ear, and I don't think he was actually shaving his ear. The good news is that it's not like anyone could see his ears anyway, they are lost in the hair. Maybe that's how it happened.

Hannah and Diana went to see the show "We Will Rock You" on Thursday night, they seemed to enjoy it. Rory and I stayed home, which was quiet but dull.

In between games on Friday, we took the team to Mission Bay where they frolicked in the fountain and the sea. We then took them to Bastion Point and they frolicked in the pond and then did other random things. They needed to let off a bit of steam, it was good for them.

It is my birthday today, and Charles' birthday tomorrow. It is also the fifth anniversary of toll free portability going live. Not bad for a system we designed a long time ago.

Movember ended on Friday, and on Saturday morning the beast was removed. I am almost back to normal, well, what I call normal.

Been doing a few things around the house in my spare time. Cleaning surfaces ready for spraying to get rid of flies, even painted a couple of things that didn't look any better after cleaning. Very domestic, it's annoying how things get tatty over time and you don't always notice. The problem is the list seems to get longer, rather than shorter.