Sunday Night Procrastination Ramble

1. Helping

I resignedly helped out at a concert at school on Friday. A colleague (and friend) was stage-managing, and I said I'd come along and help IF nothing better came up. It didn't.

Good thing I was there - I ended up being the Kitchen Master. Actually, I delegated wonderfully, rather than doing anything myself, but I was the final say in all things kitchen. At one stage I also was the Ticket Master, holding all $820 from door-sales in my pocket, nervously.

There was back-stage drama. The highlight for me was about 10 minutes from the beginning, where the kids organising the whole thing were running wildly through the lobby at about two minute intervals, crazily calling out, 'Where's the kapa haka group? We've lost the kapa haka!' It made me laugh. (There were eventually found - crisis averted.) I joined in and yelled out, 'Has anyone found the kapa haka?' a few times too, just for good measure.

Nothing like a bit of pre-show drama, I say.

I had a two-station layout for the kitchen. I dubbed it the Double-Whammie System. One money-vessel either side of the middle divider, with a teapot either side as well. I think that eased bottle-necks that could have formed. I quite liked just standing in the back and having people call out, 'Two juices! I need two juices!' and then I'd jump to action at the juice station. I think I secretly always wanted to work in fast food, or maybe I've been watching too much reality TV chef competitions. We had rubber gloves for food handling, which was cool. And I organised signage and had directed that once the soloist was on stage it was one act til interval - so it was ACTION STATIONS! Teabags in pots! Open up the rolling-slide-thingie! GO GO GO! 'Where the hell is the kapa haka?!?!?!'

After some last minute price-slashing we still had leftovers, so I got to eat some yummy stuff. Perks! Fudge and brownies. Mmmm.

We then went to that Spanishy looking place between the backpackers and Lone Star on Tory St. for a drink and tapas. It was nice. The spicy almonds were super good. Kinda like classy beer nuts. I've always dreamed about have beer nuts since I was a kid and used to see them on Cheers all the time.

2. NBA Action

I have watched two whole playoff games. I am scrutinising the whole LeBron and Kobe thing. I'm softening on the LeBron debate - he speaks really nicely in interviews and has a lot of respect for Jordan and Bird, which earns points with me. And Kobe is pretty smooth on offence. I don't see him doing as much for his team, though, maybe. Not much ball movement.

Me and Ed's expert opinion was that Dallas was a better team, defensively and with more options on offence. But LA seemed to step it up when it mattered, which is important in the playoffs. I quite liked the Birdman guy (tall white guy with tattoos all over him - not that soft-handed, but very 'active'). The big white guy for LA had a nice shooting touch, but he was very very lazy on defence. He would double-team then kinda loaf around in the middle of the court once he eased off, rather than scrambling back to find the open man. I'm guessing he's European.

I took my uke around for Ed to touch. He's one of those people who can pick up an instrument and play it instantly. Those people suck. He is banned from my uke now. Only music-retards are allowed near it (like my band!).

2b. Kate Action

My detailed game analysis is in tiny writing since I think it's pretty dull to non-basketballers (that'd be everyone except Jon). And Jon is a guard and guards are stupid, so he won't empathise with my ramblings.

I played a basketball game last week, first one of the new season. It was ok. We lost pretty badly, which we deserved. The other team was young and quick and pretty awesome outside shooters. They didn't get too much inside, though. We switched to the 3-2 zone, which worked better against them, but the finer points of that defence are hard to teach a team in the middle of a game. We had several new players. A 3-2 is tricky in that you can easily create huge holes in the middle of the key, and the wing people have to go right down low, which they tend to not like doing. It's kinda a vulnerable defence if people don't move quickly to cover holes, it requires a lot of good instincts.

I would quite often find myself having to cover the middle of the key when it swung away from my side (which is fine, it's the right thing to do). But then the wing on my side should have dropped down lower to cover the shooter they had stationed in the weakside baseline corner (a skip pass away). Bleh. I kept finding myself having to cover the high-post or person cutting through the key, but also being aware of all the weakside shooting options they had just one pass away.... and I knew I couldn't stop ALL of their options.

I blocked a few shots cleanly - I liked the refs. They called about four fouls on the other team for bumping me from behind when I was catching the ball (going over my back), but I don't think I got any fouls called against me all game.

And on offence my team was a mess. With a few new players we were all bunching up and we often had two people running to the same wing or three people posting up inside. There was no consistent balance. And even when we got balance and I thought we could start playing a high-low offence, the ball wouldn't really move from one side to the other. It was awkward. I spent most of the time looking confused and trying to just move out of the way because too many people were running ball-side. I'm happy to play on the wing, but when the tallest player on the team is having to pop out to play safety-pass at the top of the key there's something a little wrong with the offence.

3. Ultimate Ultimate

Had a good game tonight. We beat the other Creature team. We were behind for the first half, then came back to even it up and took a 3 point lead into the last few minutes. I scored maybe three points and assisted on another (we won 11-9) and played good defence (my players didn't score any points and I got a few knock-downs). So that was good.

Their defence was a bit lax, so I was never really under pressure when I was catching, so didn't drop anything. And as long as we all took our players outside when we were near the scoring zone, it was easy enough to make a sudden cut in and be open for a blade or something.

The other team had some guys with quick hands who were getting lots of intercepts and knock-downs, but I over-passed to whatever side they weren't near and that seemed to work most of the time.

I wish players would do that in all sports more often - especially netball. When the other team has a superjumpy quick guy who keeps getting intercepts, make sure your passes lead your team-mate to run AWAY from that guy. It's pretty simple.... but the opposite can happen frustratingly often.

4. Ridiculous Procrastination

I have been procrastinating all weekend, working on unnecessary publicity stuff (school website updates, newsletter proofing) and practising my uke rather than doing my marking. Silly me! My washing is also undone. And my hair unwashed. And I have no lunch for tomorrow.

5. Optimal Quiz Numbers

I went to the Realm quiz on Thursday. Our team was way too big - we had about ten people around a huge round table. And the guy with the pen was on the opposite side to me. I contributed one answer (thanks to Michelle's crazily named netball teams I was able to fairly confidently say that 'Pikey' was a character from Snatch, not Two Smoking Barrels - not that anyone really listened to me).

It was a weird combination of people. My flatmate was there with two girls she works with, one of whom had a partner who was there with four of his friends. Then there was me and Reidun. Turns out the guys were mostly teachers, one of whom was my associate teacher on my first ever section. Odd! When we were introduced he said, 'Oh, we've already met.' And I said, 'We have?' then realised who he was and mumbled, being slightly embarrassed to be around someone who has seen me probably being young, nervous and only slightly competent (Year 12 Economics - yuck!).

I think a couple of them used to be in the team who were our arch-enemies at The Office quiz - remember Divine Intervention? Sam and Fi might, anyhow. It wasn't the Turtle Lady or Hong-Kong Phoey, but the other guys.

It was an odd quiz night, where I knew people at four different tables (old school friends of my brother's, a fellow Media teacher and some ex-students, as well as the associate teacher).

The quiz master sucked. I'd probably stop going if she ran it every week. She caused us angst with her inefficiency and arrogance. She's one of those people who thought she was funnier and more popular than she was. I think you need to realise as quiz master that it's ok, even preferable, to keep your own personality and opinions out of it. It's like being a newsreader. We don't need jokes or clues.

And when you notice people are all leaving early, don't accost them on your microphone to try and make them stay til you read the results. They are leaving BECAUSE OF YOU, dumbass.

And the people from Levin, my brother's friends, came second. They only had three people. Levin people are schmart, evidently. My team of ten people came well behind them.