Monday Cricket Wrap

Another victory for Greystanes in the Parramatta District B10’s.  Sent into bat, Greystanes got off to a decent start on Day 1 only to see it crumble losing 4/1 to be in dire straights before Crazy Dave Mandic and Pete Nahlous steadied the ship.  Dave finished 66 not out as Greystanes was all out for 131.  Not very many.

In the field, Greystanes made early in roads and the wickets kept tumbling in the late afternoon session to have Wenty Leagues at 6/70 at stumps with Paul Brewster getting 3 of the 6 wickets.

Day 2, Wenty got off to a flying start and scored a number of boundaries as they tried to real in the deficit.  Wayne Agius however bagged 2 quick wickets to set Wenty back on their heals and in the end Wenty Leagues were bowled out for 105.

Greystanes were asked to bat again and make shift opener Angelo Buultjens was out for a duck but Pete Nahlous and Crazy Dave Mandic again batted beautifully to have Greystanes 1/63 at drinks in which the outright pursuit was ended rather prematurely.

Next week, Greystanes travel to play Norwest CC away at Kellyville Park.

Lunch Post

Late lunch time posting today as I was determined to finish reading my current novel, Dan Brown’s “Digital Fortress”.  I haven’t read any other books of Dan Brown since I read the Da Vinci Code.  I really enjoyed the Da Vinci Code but thought I would be disappointed in the other books…. This one though was enjoyable as it was easy to read and was a bit like one of Matthew Reilly’s action novels… flowed very quickly, short sharp bursts – basically read like a movie.

This is why I guess Mr Brown does get criticized because a lot of people say that he isn’t a “good writer” and that he is only on so many best seller lists because of the controversial material that was the Da Vinci Code.  But to hell with that, it’s a good story and was easy to read on a train!  That will do me…

Also watched episode 4 of Jericho on TV last night.  Car crash TV at its finest and again I wasn’t disappointed.  I kid you not this is the dodgiest show I have seen.  Highlights include a 16yr old boy restocking a supermarket with food that was on a locked but crashed goods train 5 miles away with nothing but a push bike.  Yes, in episode 3 we saw him find the train abandoned on the tracks (where did the driver go?) and next we see him surprise the old supermarket lady with fully stocked shelves.  Surprise!

We see the TV for some reason replaying home video footage of the blast in Cincinnati.  Who filmed it?  How did the film survive a thermo nuclear blast?  How come its on continual 24hr loop on TV that is able to be picked up in Jericho and nothing else?  We see the heroes hand pump 600 gallons (is that close to litres?) of petrol into a steel (watch for sparks!) pesticide tanker and drive it across town to refill the generator *just* in time before the baby in the incubator dies.

They find a radiation sick man and accuse him of murdering “Shep” (who I cant recall) and kill him during the “torture” session… nice one.  Then they cry when they find the man’s family dead by a lake all from radiation… boo hoo.

Crazy dumb show… make sure you watch it.

Ignore Free-to-air TV whingeing

This is exactly why Australian's should ignore the pitiful pleas of our free to air TV networks over the fact that Pay TV is taking over sport in this country. If the Networks stopped treating us as idiots and were more flexible in their programming, then maybe they wouldn't be in this mess. Get Foxtel people, its the way of the future - tell Channel 9 to "fark off!"

Anger over delayed telecast - League - Fox Sports

Holidays Aren't What They Used To Be.

Coming back to work on a Wednesday is a weird feeling and it has thrown my body clock out of whack – but a good kind of whack as I realise today is Thursday and the weekend isn’t far away.

Yesterday’s first day in the office was horrendous as I have a bad head cold and am stuffed up badly and I spent 5 hours in meetings with externals and another 2 hrs in meetings with my own department.  All I could think of was the ever building pile of emails in my inbox.  That’s the price you pay for holidays in the modern age.  Your incoming work remains unattended to in your inbox and “urgent” messages remain unanswered from 2 weeks ago and instead of the sender reading your out of office reply stating you wont be back for 2 weeks and taking their issue to someone else, they simply wait for you to return.

“Yes my message is urgent but I can wait two weeks”.  So you come back and there is a queue.  A queue of emailers and now because the office runs with VoIP, all my voice mails are in my inbox as well.  I had checked in on emails periodically during my holiday, but really it was for personal reasons – emails from friends and my Diplomacy games were the main reasons I would log in.  All the work stuff I left and now I had about 400 unread emails.

A quick cull of these by removing office notices, work related spam, meeting invites and some of the mailing lists I subscribe to saw this number come down to 180 – amazing how much crap you get.  Then I managed to deal with 30 or so emails during the day and on the way home last night I worked on the laptop and got that down to 103.

Today though my calendar is clear, and I plan on sifting through the remaining 100+ and of course the stuff that has come in overnight and clear up.  By then, it will be the weekend!

Next week, I should be able to start the week on an even footing, but I think I’ll need a holiday again!  LOL.

 

Nuclear Threat? Get a Barn!

Huzzah!  We’re back by popular demand and I write to you this morning from the 6:22am from Glenbrook.

Now as most of you, like me are scared to the bejesus by those Evil™ North Koreans and their nuclear test over the weekend I want to recommend watching the reasonably new TV series “Jericho” on Thursday nights.  This show, if you haven’t watched the first 3 episodes is set in a small US rural town called Jericho which is in the middle of nowhere in the Colorado wilderness.  Then one day (at the end of episode 1 to be precise) a massive mushroom cloud on the western horizon indicates that Denver has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb – was it the Evil™ North Koreans?  We don’t know this yet, but anyways the town gathers together under the leadership of a country bumpkin Mayor, his scone making Missus and his two dorky sons (the oldest of which is the Deputy Mayor, the younger the resident “Bad Boy”) and they set about “makin’ things right”.

It would have to be bordering on the most ridiculous show ever made.  This dawned on me when the town was about to be hit with a thunderstorm in the days preceding the blast and they have realised via some scratchy pieces of communication that basically every major city in the US has been wiped out.  Given that 50 nuclear warheads have gone off and the weather remains a pleasant sunny 25 Celsius the townsfolk realise that any rain will bring “RADIATION”.  Yee Gods!  So they scramble for shelter and the town sits in various cubby holes and tape up their windows with plastic sheeting and one bunch of people hide in their basement.

Then when the rain clears, they all come outside and have a BBQ!  Yes, no radiation (it passed in the rain) and their solution is to cook all the meat in the super market because its about to go off (shouldn’t it be glowing green??).  Amazing show… if this show was based on a semblance of fact you’d be asking yourself why are we so worried about North Korea?!  Surely if Kim Jong-Il drops the big bomb on the Western world, as long as it doesn’t rain we’ll be right.

If you want to watch some TV that is ridiculously bad, so bad that you have to watch it like a train wreck, then I highly recommend Jericho on Thursday nights… and make sure you take notes in case North Korea get antsy!

 

 

Lazy Holiday Posting

Hello all. Sorry for the lack of activity, but the holidays have kept
me busy and because I am not captive to the laptop on the train for 3hrs
a day, the blog hasnt been upfront in my mind.

But thats not to say it isnt at all and I will be returning to work next
Wednesday, so you can look forward to some dribble then.

In the interim, I have been in holiday mode and have seen 3 movies. Two
of them kids movies with Garfield 2 being rubbish, but probably better
than Garfield 1 if anyone saw that. We then saw Meryl Streep in the
Devil Wears Prada and it was quite good and despite it being a chick
flick, I found it a good story. Then Kate & I saw "Monster House" which
is a pretty good kids movie but would be pretty scary for littlies.

Also, played cricket yesterday and score my second golden duck in a
row!! Bowled both times. Most depressing. Still the team did OK, I
was the second wicket when we lost 4/1 but we recovered to post 131. We
have Wenty Leagues at 6/70 at stumps and look the goods for first
innings points.

Other news is sporadic, we spent the day gardening and I bought a boot
load full of Cow Manure and Garden Soil and fixed up some of our lesser
performing gardens and will be buying some new plants tomorrow. We also
spent a couple of hours at Springwood Pools where the kids swam and
played on the waterslide.

Other than that, not much. Niki and I are going out tomorrow to see the
movie World Trade Centre and have a bite to eat.

Day At The Beach

Spent today at Stanwell Park Beach down near Wollongong today and apart from being fairly blowy on the beach, the day was beautiful.

We drove down in the morning and watched a hang glider go off the top of Bald Hill and then headed on into the beach.

In the afternoon, we had lunch at the kiosk - seafood baskets - and then the girls played in the park. Kate had a go at the camera and snapped this picture - one of the rare pics of Niki and I together in the one shot.

Then the girls did some cartwheels!