The week that God met Stephen Hawking

LOCAL NEWS Some survey reckons getting meth is easier and faster than marijuana. One third of respondents said they could get meth in less than 20 minutes, which is impressive given that a coffee can take that long in some places. The Labour Party seem to be winning at the sexual molestering Olympics at the moment. After the death of two people evading cops, and an innocent bystander, we got the rhetoric about should police chase people. Of course they should, otherwise people will just drive away from police cars at 60km/hr in a 50 zone and wave good bye to the police, that would be ridiculous. On Tuesday night, a couple of young ladies drove into the house on Pt Chev Road at the end of our street, the house was a mess, the car was written off, and the women were unhurt but arrested. Apparently the Honda Torneo is the most stolen car in New Zealand, I’ve never heard of one, apparently it’s the name they use in Japan for the Accord. A parcel that was very obscurely labelled made it to its destination. Social media wet itself because New Zealand Post rarely delivers anything in one piece. Dairy owners want the government to pay for cigarette vending machines in their dairies so they can make money out of something that kills people without the inconvenience of risking getting killed by cigarette thieves. Seriously? Some guy was named in an insider trading trial. He wasn’t very good at it, he sold two days after he got the tip that sales weren’t good, and it was for a lousy $15,000 worth of shares. I mean, if you heard some bad news was coming, wouldn’t you consider selling? I thought Insider Trading was all about people on the board selling their shares before some big secret thing happened, like the Intel guy recently. An 11yo girl died in Ngaruawahia when she was hit by a train on a railway bridge. Apparently most of the laundered money in New Zealand is from drugs and fraud. Not sure how burglary is so much less than drugs because I thought drugs were paid for by burgling. WORLD NEWS Stephen Hawking dying was very big news, not completely unsurprising, he did well to make it to 76. He threw a party for time travellers, and nobody showed up, he didn’t send invitations until afterwards. It was a fun idea. Is it just me or is Russia constantly in the news for doing dodgy deeds? If they’re not annexing property, poisoning people, or swaying elections it’s not a real news day. Meanwhile, the USA proved they can’t swing an election like Russia can as Putin appears to be returning with a bigger majority after their election. The news of a year in space altering 7% of an astronaut’s genes was thoroughly misleading, how some genes were being expressed failed to change back to normal after, on 93% returned to previous. He still has the same DNA, and his telomeres actually increased. Toys R Us is finally closing up shop, they have been in trouble for a long time. I can’t say it is a shame, because they were big but not very good. The collapsed bridge in Miami wasn’t nice, but six people isn’t many, more get shot in Miami before tea time on any given day. St Patrick’s Day happened, people wore green and claimed to be Irish a lot. Trump fired someone else, I think it was the guy who installed the revolving doors in all the high offices. Some news service is forcing people to answer questions to prove they have read the article before they post a comment. What a wonderful idea. Such a simple thing yet it could improve the nonsense out there considerably. MY SAD LIFE Tuesday morning the place was crawling with Year 5s and 6s with luggage off to school camp. On Thursday I saw one of Rory’s old teachers doing the crossing on her own, she asked me how Rory was doing. He had her when he was about seven. I was impressed she remembered. I finally got the new monitor going, not at a very high resolution, I need a better video card. Wednesday’s Bambi walk was in considerable darkness, the most exciting bit was checking out the house hit by a car, and the six herons at the dog park, one of which botched a landing in a tree, it was kind of funny. We then saw the house that got hit by a car, it was messed up, I reckon the whole side wall has been shifted, they are getting a structural engineer to check it out. I posted a letter on Wednesday, that was exciting. $1.20 for a standard post letter within New Zealand! I had to use three .40c stamps, which we have clearly had for a couple of years or maybe ten. Thursday I dropped Hannah and Allister at the airport. Friday morning we had a surprise walk with Maddie’s BFF Lily, it was nice to see her again, they were both very excited. Saturday was even more surprising. We drove out to darkest Flatbush, to Barry Curtis Park, for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Walkathon, they raise money for Guide Dogs each year and so the GDF like to have a presence there. There were 23 people from Guide Dogs, four dogs, including two young puppies (Rossie and Topaz, both about four or five months), Maddie, and a working guide dog called….Mack. This was very exciting, because Mack is Maddie’s brother and littermate, Maddie is #106681 and Mack is #106682. We met his handler, Laura, and Maddie and Mack got to have a bit of a play, then did a lap of the track together, and then chilled with each other while Laura did a couple more laps. We haven’t seen Mack since he was about 12 weeks old, but Laura reckons he’s not really interested in other dogs much and that certainly wasn’t the case with Maddie. Their hospitality at the even was pretty good, they did some food after, and we stayed quite a while. It was quite a big day and by the time we got home we really didn’t achieve very much for the rest of it. Sunday morning, Diana went to pilates on the beach at Takapuna, and I took Maddie up Mt Eden. There was a walking event happening for Downs Syndrome children, which I didn’t know about, so Maddie met a couple of specials. Later we went to the GDF Puppy Fun Day, about fifty different guide dog puppies, breeders, and retired guide dogs. It was mayhem, but plenty of fun, we didn’t go last year because Maddie was in season. The first time we went we were noobs with one of the youngest pups there, this time she was the only non-breeding breeder. Hannah and Allister went to Melbourne for a tournament. Allister won two gold medals and a silver (pretty sure that’s right), I would hope he’s happy with his results. They stayed with Charles and Steph, I didn’t realise it was Steph’s birthday on Friday. The good news is that Hannah and Allister weren’t locked out of there flat so they didn’t show up at our place at 2am this morning. We saw Rory and Hannah J last night, about three weeks since we last saw him, Diana was getting a little grumpy. I am continuing to grind away with my Francais. The DuoLingo program isn’t perfect, so I am supplementing with other things. Diana bought me a French grammar book because she was sick of me swearing when I put mangez instead of manges or mangons or whatever. I am supposedly about halfway through the program but really don’t think I am remotely competent yet. Done 23 days in a row so far. Okay, not too late today by my standards recently.