A Basketball Spectacle

Tonight I witnessed what many are calling the game of the season.

Jon's team got their first (and possibly only) win! (It's Morgan's team too, but mainly Jon's). They had apparently both skipped netball because they'd scouted the draw and seen this game was actually winnable, so they had to have all hands on deck and they had to be fresh.

Me and Michelle and Sam turned up to lend our support, post-and-pre-netball, and were treated to the Jon Show.

After he was fouled he got two shots. I called that he would make one and miss one, Sam thought he'd make both and Michelle wasn't listening, but I told her she got to have two makes as her bet. I won. I think it's pretty common to miss the first and adjust on the second shot. Money! Jon is my puppet.

Then Jon got two little fall-away baseline shots. Sweet. That's at least 5 points for the game.

There was rapturous applause at the final buzzer.

* * *

Had parent interviews. They were good. Nice parents. Got my cup of tea (they often miss me out 'cause I talk so much). Couple of parents said they love my subject and like meeee.

* * *

I liked wearing my purple dress today. It is swishy.

I have a lot of shoe-envy at the moment. People are buying nice boots.

* * *

The ukulele band is back on track. We are still name-less.

* * *

I eat crappy during term-time. Except for the mandarins.

* * *

I am planning a big night in on Friday to watch The Bachelor. Enough of this socialising malarky.

* * *

TK is still my favourite hunk on Shortland St. I would marry him if I was fictional. A student said I reminded her of Sarah Potts once.

* * *

Pinot Gris seems very popular at the minute. When did that happen? It's the new pinot noir.

* * *

I have bought new conditioner. Phew. The shampoo/conditioner combo I was using was amazingly bad. It made my hair knotty and boofy. Now my hair is silkier :)

My mistrust in salespeople has been softened. It was a good recommendation.

* * *

And I liked this headline:

Barefoot man shouldn't be approached - police

You don't need to tell me twice. I'm always cautious around bare-foot people.

Crafternoon Project

Finished. Three circular notice-boards. Fabric covering easily changed. I likes em.

1. Tetris Discussions Were Held

Damon explained some of the algo-thingies behind the Battle Tetris programme. It was interesting. It may help my game.

2. Walks were Had

Me and Mishell had our fifth Sunday walk in a row. We are determined! This time we went from Seatoun 'round to Scorchorama and beyond, along the precarious verges of the road. We estimate 4.5km each way for a total of one and half hours. It's always a bit further than we anticipate. We blame our agility and speed of walking.

In theory it would be pretty cool to walk around every single coast-line in the Wellington City region (the ones with footpaths, anyhow). We have done both sides of Island Bay now (from Red Rocks to Lyall Bay), from Freyberg Pool around to almost Greta Point and now Seatoun.

Coming up may be a walk from Miramar to the new Chocolate Fish, so we can finish up the Maupuia coast.

It is a good mission! And today was a lovely walking day. While it threatened to rain city-way with big looming clouds, Seatoun was glorious and sunny with blue skies. A good strategic choice! We think we identified Peter Jackson's house.

3. Hush

I got some black Hush Puppies court shoes. I like saying I have 'court shoes'. It sounds American. I figure with my newly tight Archilles tendons I should buy sensible brands of work-wear shoes, but I will not go down to Kumfs. Not yet.

4. American Idol

Bleh. All the good people are gone.

5. Labour

I like the new slogans. 'Don't blame me - I voted Labour'. I feel like I've been saying it for almost six years now.

My So-Called Life is still so good. Thanks to Rich for lending it to me.

Though we both find we associate more with the parents now than we used to. Teens are so wild and crazy!

Jordan Catalano is still so hot. So very very vacant, but very hot. I think most teenagers have that boy with the floppy hair that we found so so cute. The quiet mysterious guy.

I still have a soft spot for Brian too.

And the Mum is great.

Good times!

* * *

Me and Miss Shellvis went for our FOURTH walk in a row. We're doing a very good job of not piking.

Today

1. I marked six essays and recorded the grades on google docs. I am a google docs convert - they're useful.

2. I visited the Asian supermarket and went a bit crazy on miso soup packets and husked sunflower seeds. Miso is going to be my work-snack of the season.

3. I told two kids off about shoes. High top sneakers, even if they ARE black and they ARE leather.... do not count as school shoes. And she knows it! (Yes - I am THAT teacher! With my form class, anyhow.)

4. I threw a paper dart in a competition and came the closest to winning.

5. I watched Mean Girls at least twice. But only the first 53 minutes or so. On none of those occasions did I realise that the annoying girl from Party of Five was in it (the theme song for which, incidentally, was one of the questions at the movie quiz).

6. I wished Shortland St wasn't two hours (I don't care about the evil plot to oust Callum or Murray's affair - bleh to both plots!).

7. I came THIS CLOSE to buying $1 Wendy's ice creams off an Internet site.

8. I sat patiently with my Asperger's girl and discouraged her from writing an essay mainly about alliteration and rhyme.

9. I wore my cowboy/peasant shirt.

10. I ate weevil-muesli.

11. I talked about the Osama thing with people at lunch time. Good philosophical arguments were had. Was it ok to kill an unarmed man rather than take him into custody? Did it make it a special case in that it was fairly certain future loss of life could be avoided by taking him out immediately? Was it that act or the celebratory coverage of his death that was more concerning? Etc.

12. I came 6th equal out of 13 teams at movie quiz. Only 5 points off a placing - not bad for a small team of all-girls. Did I mention my dart? And the fact that I knew Eric Clapton's nickname?

And that was pretty much my day.

The end.

And I played some Battle Tetris to make my brain quiet.

Typo with Consequences

Yesterday my students had a big assignment due in, worth credits.

I had a student email me during the day saying 'All the work I did this morning didn't save! Can I have until tomorrow night to finish it please?'

I chuckled to myself in a Jabba the Hutt kinda way, good try, kid! I emailed back, 'You only lost an hour or so's work - you will have to hand in what you've done and maybe resubmit later. I can't give you a day and a half extension for losing an hour's work.'

She didn't hand anything in, so I figured she'd given up and hadn't really had enough work - her problem, given they've had a month to think about it.

Then today she emails me 'Oh thanks so much Miss!'

And I go, 'Huh? Thanks for what?'

I reread the email and instead of typing CAN'T, I'd written CAN. Oops! So it said 'You can have a day and a half extension.' Didn't really make sense in the context of the other stuff I'd written.... but I can't really argue her handing it in today....

FOILED! Damned internet. Had she asked me face to face my 'NO' would have been much clearer. Now I have to accept her late work - that hurts my badass teacher pride.

Next time a kid sends me a last minute email like that I will just type 'NO NO NO!' Much clearer.

Breakers Bandwagon

Me and Miss Shell watched the Breakers game tonight. Chon and Morgan were doing wussie stuff with plays and babies.

The first three quarters of the game were fairly boring. The Breakers looked ugly on offence - clanging lots of long shots, not really working the ball around much. The orange team looked marginally better, but the whole thing was ugly-ball with lots of silly fouls and turn-overs.

Then it got interesting towards the end. There were some really clutch shots from both teams. Just when you thought one team had stuck the dagger in, the other team would answer. I personally hated the Braswell threees (clutch, yes but if they'd missed you woulda said 'Stupid option!' both times). The Dorsal-fin guy's ones were better - he had to take the shots, was waaay out of range both times and nailed them both.

I thought Penney was just getting into his groove in the over-times, working the ball around really well and either drawing the foul or dishing the ball off to someone inside..... but then Braswell and Brunton kept hiffing up one-on-one three pointers rather than actually running an offence. The same shots had kept them in the game earlier on, but at that point in the game we'd just gotten a few great inside baskets and it kinda ruined our momentum. I didn't like it anyhow.

Me and Michelle thought they were both hunguses.

Chewbacca was pretty clutch for his team. Gotta like a player who takes the ball to the rim hard.

Phil Jones and Penney were both veeery quiet all game. Maybe they'll come out blazing in Game 3? I hope so. I prefer Penney to be in charge of the offence - he seems to make decent decisions.

My favourite Breaker of the game was Abercrombie and Fitch. Vercona was active, which I liked, but did a couple of silly things as well.

And that is my take on the game.

I'm sad now because the royal wedding is on at the same time as the deciding game. And I'm already committed to watching that.

I was secretly hoping the Breakers wouldn't win Game 2 because it's way more exciting to have a deciding game (plus they really didn't deserve to win that game - it was ugly most of the way).

* * *

I got new boots. They're swell. They match my bag too. I like to coordinate.

* * *

My favourite thing at the moment: playing Battle Tetris was Florence and the Machine's 'Dog Days' playing. It makes me even better.

* * *

I washed the car today. Inside and out. Including the black stuff on the hub caps. I did this all in my new Kate Sylvester dress and new boots. And didn't get a stain on either one! That's either really stupid or really clever..... not sure which one.......

1.

I had to renew my driver licence today. The eye test seemed a lot harder than last time. Either my peripheral vision isn't that good or they put a few 'dummy' ones in there that I just couldn't see..... that's mean of them, if they did.... I think I got a 'K' wrong on line two of the sight test - I said H or N... wasn't sure if you were allowed take-backs......

[Pretty sure my photo was weird - I was consciously thinking 'Don't smile - do something that would look good as a mug-shot' - maybe not a good strategy.]

Having driven for six months on an expired licence (five of which were accidental and oblivious) I just couldn't wait for a good hair day to do it. I settled for a reasonably-clean hair day instead.

I am such a conscientious citizen that while I drove to VTNZ, I did park down the street so that nobody in the building would realise I had driven on my expired licence - it just seemed unethical.

2.

I agreed to take Cassie to the airport today (offered, even).

Then she told me I had to be up by 8am. On a holiday day.

I got so much done before midday. Hung out a load of laundry and watched 'Law Abiding Citizen'.

3.

My dad missed out some apostrophes on his blog. I scolded him for it. To be fair, they were tricky ones ('its' and 'lets').

4.

My ankle is still swollen. Things take so long to heal once you're over 30. I can feel my skin cells degenerating as I type. I may have to start wearing shoes that have actual support in them. At least Kumfs have a trendy new label these days..... and Hush Puppies have always been kinda cool in my books (they were my dad's favourite shoes growing up).

5.

My new vacuum sounds like a jet engine. And it is bagless. I have spoken of the wonder of this to many people already. Cleaning is so much better when there are tangible results (a container full of dust to inspect and measure).

It's so strong that I almost had to wrestle it off when it started sucking up my cardigan.

6.

I had a pastrami and pickled onion sandwhich for lunch.

7.

So prezi.com is the new cool thing for teachers to use. Me and a colleague made this prezi - http://prezi.com/b-kgkjxkdcjr/war-poetry-year-12/ . It's on good old WW1 Poetry. If you go to the section with poems by our class, you can see some Miss J poems. We had to take two of the poems we'd studied and blend them into a new poem. A lot of kids took it literally (plus I only gave them 10 minutes to do it - that's all the time we have for non-essential fun in MY class!). My ones are pretty awesome.

Just because I haven't posted any photos of injuries this month. This is my twisted ankle. It got twisted in the dying moments of the indoor netball game last week - we were up by two, the other team had the ball and under a minute to go. I tangled ankles with someone (probably Walter) and turned it... but I soldiered on. Then they got a two pointer in and tied the game. Stink.

My ankle was satisfyingly swollen the next day - very localised to the ankle bone bit, so not actually painful to walk on, but still impressive to show people. Now I have nice bruising coming up too. Jolly good.

(I cut the bit out that was hairy - need to wax my legs.)

* * *

We may be close to finding a new flatmate (to replace Colleen, who's moving to Denmark to get married). We have an offer on the go and an interested second choice if that falls through.

* * *

Shocked by last night's Idol elimination. Nobody picked that in the flat betting pool.

* * *

Had a great night out on Saturday. Bunch of people from work went to see a band (plus Sam). Band gigs are very noisy, though. I do like that I work with lovely people this year - very un-wanky and friendly types. Sam said it was an interesting comparison to the staff at Upper Hutt :) I think the word 'cultured' might have been used - though that may have been a euphemism for something less flattering.

* * *

And that is all for now. Oh, went to an awesome sale at Area 51. I got Kate Sylvester and Huffer stuff for around $60 a piece - bargains! Love a good sale. If it's still there (just a few doors down from actual store on Dixon St) have a look. I think it might've finished on Saturday, though.

1.

I accidentally infected my school computer with a killer virus the other day. I lost a bunch of stuff from the c-drive that I'd been working on.

Luckily I'd just had an upgrade and had transferred everything onto an external drive, so only lost about a week's worth of work. It was still hours and hours of stuff though :( It made me sad.

2.

I infected myself with a virus too. I have a cold and feel very poorly. Today was the wet-cough phase. By my afternoon classes I was sneezing and spluttering quite a lot.

I had to play basketball anyhow. Firstly cause I knew we didn't have many players tonight (six in total), secondly cause I wagged last week to do work.

I played ok.

The team I'm in plays 'properly', which is a bit of a shock to the system. My old team just play a loosely organised style. This team plays strict high-low post offence. No deviating. And man-to-man defence.

I may have mentioned this before.

Tonight during a time out the player/coach emphasised that I had to cut any time the other post got the ball, and it didn't matter at all if I got it... I was just making space for other people. And I found this really freeing.

So I moved more than usual... and did a few good things. I even did a 'move', where I dribbled through a couple of people and got a layup in. If there had been a crowd, they would have gone crazy (in my mind).

Anyhow. My theory is always that you should try and sweat a cold out.

I went and bought some Coldral after that.

I feel miserable now.

My chest hurts.

And my nose is sore from all the sniffing and blowing.

Luckily tomorrow is mid-term break day. So I can be miserable in bed for as long as I like.

For those non-teachers out there, I hope you are aware that the term dates have been purposely changed to fit around the Rugby World Cup. This strikes a lot of us as being really really stupid. It's basically just for Auckland traffic issues, they say. But it means we have longer-than-usual Term 1 and 2s.

The Rugby World Cup sucks.

But mid term break rules.

3.

I'm watching the politican-I-went-to-school-with's scandal in the news with interest. He's been a bit of a golden boy for a while, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. He'd be pretty heart-broken if he had to quit politics over it.

Normal Programming Will Now Resume

Today is the first day that neither the Christchurch or Japanese earthquake has been the lead story on Stuff. I was watching with vague interest, just to see how long each had currency.

The Christchurch quake held the title until the Japanese one, and now it's something about Peter Jackson having lost weight..... Back to normal.

* * *

I am now Level 17 - 'veteran'. I was in the zone tonight - no compromising, waiting for the perfect pieces. It all fell into place.

I was beating Level 16 players easily - it's like they gave away the 'expert' label. Maybe you can use that tetris money they give away to buy credentials. I'm earning it old school.

Rotate, rotate... hard drop..... Line piece.... TETRIS!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Girly Stuff from my stocktake

I have roughly this many necklaces (a few more not in shot). And this many bracelets.

They are bought mainly from: Pixel Ink, Madame Fancy Pants, Iko Iko, Magnolia, various markets, Wanda Harland and Goodness.

Only two of the ones pictures were presents from other people. The rest were presents from myself. Lots of birds. No bling.

In the Charlie Sheen madness.....

... there is surely the next name for our indoor netball team.

Tiger blood?
Rock stars from Mars?
Fools and Trolls?
Fire of 1000 Suns?
Firey Death?
Adonis DNA?
Bi-Winning?

Sobering

1.

I was in Whitcoull's tonight trying to buy a frivolous magazine. All of the women's gossip magazines from NZ had pictures of NZ celebs telling their Chirstchurch stories on the cover.

I couldn't quite bare it to buy one of those. I've had enough of those kind of stories. Not in a heartless way, but in the sense that I am saturated emotionally.

I have taught the concept that media texts that are far removed from the actual mood of the era are great for escapism (such as comedies and musicals in the 40s).

At that moment, veering for the Kim Kardashian magazine instead of the Christchurch survivor stories one, I understood that concept.

2.

We have at least four Chch students enrolling, at least temporarily, at our school.

I feel bad that they've had a decent earthquake on their arrival to Wellington tonight, where they've come to escape.

My heart was beating a little faster than normal during a 4 or 5 earth-quake and I did jump up to run for a door, which I never usually do. I usually just lie in bed and freeze, looking up blankly (like a deer in the headlights) until the quake subsides.

If my reaction has changed considerably to a small quake, I can only imagine what that must have felt like to someone from Chch who had come up here to get away from the constant after-shocks. It must be horrifying.

There is also the changed reaction now that you do immediately think 'I hope that wasn't in Christchurch'. I woke up for the original quake last year, and thought nothing of it until I got up the next morning. So the next time I was woken up by a quake, in January or so, the first thing I did was to turn on the radio and hope that it hadn't happened again.

3.

There aren't many moments in your life that you will remember vividly where you were when you heard the news.

For me, the news of this quake arrived on my way to teach my after-lunch class.

I heard the techie walking past me mumbling something about 'another quake' and said, 'Huh, what's this?'

He, rather unhelpfully, said Christchurch had been basically 'wiped off the map' this time. The Cathedral no longer existed, according to his report. Obliterated.

I passed one other teacher after that, on my way down the stairs. I told him what I'd heard and he said at the moment it was just rumours from twitter. Someone said there was damage to the Cathedral but it could just be minor - you never know. Could just be smashed glass.

He agreed that he'd heard there would be injuries and loss of life this time.

I told my class there'd been another quake. They weren't terribly moved or interested on the outside.

I did feel a bit odd. Spaced out in a small way.

During the next lesson I felt a shaking while we were watching a movie. I said, pretty calmly, 'That might be an after-shock.... is that an earthquake?'. The girl behind me admitted she'd just been jiggling her leg. I was embarrassed.

I arrived back to the staffroom and several members of my department were texting family members down there. I hadn't even thought about that - it seems so far away to me - I have no relatives down there.

Luckily some of them had already heard back and their people were fine. Others hadn't and were visibly shaken. One was talking about something class related and suddenly burst out, '.... I haven't heard from her.... I just want to know if she's ok....' and started crying, right in the middle of a conversation. She was taken to the lounge for a cup of tea.

I feel like an outsider to this disaster.

4.

It's been a week since then. It seems like longer.

5.

One of the awful stories I watched was on the Channel 3 show, 60 Minutes (?). They followed the story of a man who had heard from his wife, trapped in the CTV building. He was standing vigil outside. At first he spoke willingly, but increasingly he was annoyed by the cameras. They eventually announced they were abandoning rescue efforts at that site. We all knew his wife was inside. And she had been alive. This man was (unwillingly) showing us the most awful hours of his life.

Usually in the media these stories have happy endings.

I felt uncomfortable watching. Sometimes I don't like the media. Grief should be allowed to be private.

6.

The night of the earthquake I went to see 127 Hours with Richard. It felt weird looking around Courtenay Place and it being normal for a Tuesday night. People were in Starbucks and going to movies. It didn't seem fair. But what else do you do?

There was that strange sense of camaraderie you feel after a disaster. At the noodle house everyone had chosen tables where they could see the TV. The waitress turned it up to full volume so we could hear the reports.

I said to Richard, 'Once they get a death toll, they're going to go crazy with it.' And they did. 65 deaths was scrolled across the screen and repeated as often as possible once it was announced.

I wonder what it is about actually have a figure that makes it more 'newsworthy'. I guess it's logical - you get a sense of scale. But why is '65 officially confirmed dead' better news than 'Hundreds missing, possibly dead'? I bet it was at that moment that the BBC and CCN started salivating over the story.

Sometimes my job is cool.

I brought this and this into my lesson today and made both 'relevant' to the media theory we were talking about (the spoon one was more of a stretch, but still demonstrated the social interaction use of a media text because they were all laughing together and talking about it as they walked out of the classroom!).

* * *

I saw True Grit tonight. I really liked it. It's another good Coen Brothers one. The end does go rather quickly after much, much buildup. But I enjoyed the whole thing and the main characters were all great (particularly the Jeff Bridges one and the young heroine). I kinda like that she went the whole hog, against convention (the bit just before the snake-pit).

Much more humour than No Country for Old Men (which I also really liked).

I turned my computer on to look at the latest world happening on Stuff.

And got English teacher rage.

So school is back

I'm at work again.

It's good.

It's nice having a 'career'. Every year I feel more senior and sagely. We have three new department members, so I feel even more sagely than usual. I am a fountain of knowledge and tips. My self-importancy overfloweth.

My classes seem pretty good so far.

I am in about ten class-rooms. That's yuck. It makes me about 10 minutes late to every lesson by the time I've fought my way across the school (sometimes going to the wrong room), set up my laptop again (then realised some vital chord is missing or broken, and given up) and gone back to the staffroom to get the stuff I forgot to bring. I took for granted how awesome it was having a home-base with functioning IT equipment other years.

I'm teaching Media the old-school style with me and a white board marker. No fancy 'technology'. Bleh. I will teach them film noir by re-enacting the key scenes with accents and props. You should hear my Bogart impression.

Apparently the timetabler is working on solutions. Until then I'll be the teacher rushing around carrying a Nood basket full of everything I might ever need (today it was nail polish remover, 20 diaries, a hole punch, a stack of A3 paper, my laptop, a bag full of about 50 pens, and some other stuff).

After bringing nail polish remover from home only one kid in my form class had offending nails. I was almost disappointed. My rants must be sinking in or something. Phase two is taking on the nose rings!

More of my excess

I have no whiteboards at home. But I have over 30 whiteboard markers for some reason. Mostly taken from school. Accidentally.

1. Ants

Why are there ants on my laptop moniter? I keep killing them but they keep coming back. Just two at a time. No trail. Stealth.

I love that ants die so easily.

2. Frisbee

The season has started again. We had a 20-9 loss, which may sound bad but was actually ok.

We're usually playing teams that can pass the Frisbee the length of the field whereas we take a whole bunch of little passes. It's kinda like when you play an awesome 2 point shooting team in netball but pretty much stay with them (just scoring half the points cause you're only getting ones). We grafted pretty hard for our points and I'm sure there were lots of little mistakes we'll weed out as we get used to it again.

Having said that, I'm not implying that we stayed with them really. They were fitter, taller, more experienced and better. But I think they layed off us a bit of defence (either that or they're a pretty lazy team) so we got some passes strung together. We're all much, much better catchers than we used to be :)

Was nice to see Lew and Amelia again. And Mash gave us a bit of control on offence and a long-pass option (which led to a beautiful run by Lew for a point).

I had fun. I didn't like it too much when I had to chase the little red-shirt girl all over the field. But other than that it was fun. My body is built and conditioned to run exactly the length of a basketball court (and then rest for a minute). The field is twice that length. I wanted to stop half-way but the red-shirt girl kept running. Cruel. Bring on basketball season with dimensions I can handle at a sprint (or fast jog, at least).

I try to play by the motto 'rest on offence' but I just really can't keep up with those fit 'uns no matter how hard I try. Especially in current post-summer shape. Especially!

3. Nesting

I've started thinking more seriously about buying a house. I even went and got a pre-approved mortgage and stuff. I just have to be patient and wait for the right houses to come on the market. My heart in currently set on some kind of two bedroom cottage in Petone for under $400,000. I've seen a few such houses around in the last year or so of passively looking, so hopefully a few more come on the market soon.

In the mean-time I've started spending my disposable income on house stuff. I figure I could do that instead of buying dresses for a bit. I've just had two flatmates move out which has left a few things the flat needed. I usually resent buying stuff like that, but since it's stuff I'll have to buy anyhow it feels less painful to buy some now rather than have to spend thousands all at once when I buy a house. If I can do it bit by bit from my cheque account it will mean my deposit is bigger! I'll put off buying stuff that wears out quickly or needs to be the right size for the house (new manchester and couch).

I have bought

• a big wooden chopping board (one of those checkerboard ones 60% off at Nood)
• a few sharp knives
• a pots and pans set (60% off at Briscoes, bless them)
• a spice rack (one of those awesome magnetised ones)
• a pot-holder
• more giant plastic storage boxes with wheels and lids (to clean out my linen cupboard of crap)
• a rack to put letters, take-away menus etc in
• a dvd player for the lounge ($30 - can't be bothered buying a flash one til they come down in price)
• an iron ($19 from Briscoes down from $70)

I still have to buy the big lounge TV but I'll do that some time this week.

It's quite satisfying! My sharp utility knife is awesome. It cut through a pineapple like it was butter.

4. My Favourite Things

Right now I am loving soda water with lemon and lime cordial. And vanilla-custard flavoured yoghurt. And I'm looking forward to the Fashion Police Golden Globes special. Watching Fashion Police is one of my guilty pleasures.

5. Reading

I just finished reading 'Mister Pip'. It wasn't at all what I expected. It was very easy to read. I thought it was gonna be convoluted for some reason.

Now I have to re-read stuff I'm going to teach. And start planning and stuff. No more reading for leisure!

I have enjoyed using the Michelle Library and will be going back some time though. I don't think I've ever borrowed and returned books this quickly. It's a record.

No more pizzas please.

Me, Michelle and Janine all got multiple vouchers for $6 pizzas at the Craftsman. Great deal - but it really hasn't helped my post-Christmas healthy eat idea. I spose I could've just not eaten any of them (or maybe not the full half of the pizza that I consumed) .... but they were practically free! I can't say no to free food.

Today me and Janine went there for lunch. While we had our chicken, cranberry and camenbert, we played Scrabble.

She won.

I could've won but made a dumb move at the end. She also let me have 'quin' which may or may not be a 'real' word. But it got me lots of points!

* * *

TV Advice

After that she helped me go TV shopping. With Reidun moving, we'll be TV-less again.

I figure I'll buy a 32 incher. They seem to be around $600 to $900 which is all I want to spend.

Does anyone have any advice about what to look for? I went around four shops today taking notes. Here are my questions:

1. What brands are best? The first guy said he wouldn't get a Samsung, but the other two guys I asked said they were fine. LG, Panasonic and Sony seemed to be the other main ones. I don't think I'd go down to a super-cheap brand I'd never heard of.

2. Would you bother getting full HD? I couldn't see heaps of difference on some of the sets, but maybe a little. I'm tempted to get the 50Hz HD maybe.

3. LCD, LED or plasma? I figure I'll get LCD probably. If I stretched my budget to a 42 incher I'd have to decide though. The sales guy estimated that if I watch a lot of TV it might be up to $6 a week more power to have a plasma.

4. Any other features to look for? The first guy pointed out that some brands have USB ports that you can watch movies from - that sounds good. They all seem to be Freeview ready. To be honest, I'm not a super fancy TV watcher. I just wanna do the basics. But a TV that could watch movies from my laptop or external hard-drive really easily would be a bonus. I just bought an external hard-drive today so I'm gonna steal movies off people now.

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For those of you who try to keep up with who my flatmates are (it can be confusing at times).... Reidun is moving out tomorrow having had a whirlwind job offer yesterday for a school up north. And Anthony moved in today. He seems nice. He's sporty so I may be able to make him fill in for our various teams. If he is worthy.

The changes are ringing! I'm gonna take the opportunity to do a bit of spring cleaning. Over the years lots of flatmates have left bits and pieces behind and I've never known if they were Reidun's or theirs. Now I'll be able to throw away pretty much anything that I don't want since Colleen doesn't have much stuff in the common areas and the new guy hasn't had time to spread out there yet either.

Might have to do a car-load to the dump, even. I've never done that!

If anyone is looking for a 'rustic' sleepout (no fancy stuff like bathrooms or kitchens, but it has electricity!) for $85 plus expenses... let me know :)

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Indoor Land

First indoor netball game of 2011 played. We won. That was good because the other team had two players from Michelle's outdoor team (which I played a season of twilight with at the end of last year). We like beating her outdoor teammates especially. We were losing the first quarter so had to make a wee comeback, too.

I got quite tired trying to defend the crafty little Attack guy (the one Morgan has made 'friends' with so he has to be nice to him on court). He used his elbows and other body parts craftily so that you practically have to lean on him the whole game. I don't enjoy that kind of intimacy with non love interests.

I had to make Michelle swap positions after two quarters of it. Tactically that wasn't a great move 'cause me and Ben had finally figured out his game and were double teaming him pretty well, but I felt happier down in the land of Attack. Me and Brad tend to make it like a comedy show down there.

Defence is intense! Attack is slack!

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And by the way, I have now added 'Cassie the Lap Bandit' to my blog list. It's my friend Cassie (who most of you know) and her blog about her lap band operation. She hasn't had it yet, so it's still build up (was supposed to have it, but it all went terribly wrong on the theatre table).

It's all kinda fascinating. She's also already lost 21kg just with the pre-op diets - legendary!