One Saturday in September that my mother doesn't understand

I should now be doing work, but alas, I feel it is far more important for me to remind everyone that, firstly, the Eagles are going to win on Saturday, and secondly, the North v South game is on at Windsor Park in Lonnie with a 10:30am opening bounce. Come along and have a laugh.

Last Sunday, I watched the video of last year's game. The camera work was top-notch courtesy of Mr Weirenga. We had a good laugh at our own expense. And there were quite a few super-slo-mo moments, most of which involved Tim Vaatstra getting cleaned up... he's learnt his lesson and moved back down to Hobart.

Should be a fantastic day. Hope to see you all there!

Engine analysis complete

Well, I finally submitted the IC Engine Analysis prac that I was moaning about previously. It came to just over 3000 words plus 20-odd pages of graphs and tables and analysis. Rather a large relief. I've still got four more thermodynamics and heat transfer pracs to polish off. But, our group has already submitted a control systems lab that is due this coming Monday. Choose your groups carefully is now my motto. It saves a lot of grief and panic.

Anyway back to the last hour of structures for the week. Got another assignment for that as well as a lab that I did last night. It's all under control, I hope.

I've stooped to soccer

I've finally played a semi-official game of soccer in the inaugural end of season Boundary Umpire v Field Umpire soccer game. The reason of course I mention it is that we won. 2-1. A goal down due to a first half goal to Shane Stewart, saw us looking down the barrel, but the promise of kicking with the wind in the second half revived our hope.

In the second half the wind changed, and once more we were kicking into the wind. However, the fieldies, obviously not fit enough, struggled to get men (or boys, or anyone) back into defence. Despite having trained all year for the event, having a significant bench and an almost drill seargeant attitude to the game, the Boundary XI (aka the soccer-muppets, plus a few decent players) still managed two second half goals via the boot of Marcus Orr.

Tensions were frayed when the field umpires couldn't handle the physicality (and sometimes brutality) of the game. Shane Stewart, with his VFL grand final imminent (congrats by the way), lost his cool when "Young Robbo" went hard at the ball with his head. Ironically, the game was exceedingly tame, despite the obvious lust for blood of all involved.

Things threatened to go awry in the closing moments when a deflection off a defender was "handballed" by the boundary goal-keeper Chris Badenach. However, the ensuing penalty, taken by Joel Harris (pronounced Harr-asss) fired straight at the keeper and Bades gleefully accepted the gift.

So, a 2-1 victory and a life-time of bragging rights.

Abusive goal umpires

I umpired a preliminary final on Sunday - Hobart beat Clarence by 4 points in a very close game. However, after the game I was told by a goal umpire (in reference to my abs of steel) "you've got more rolls than Banjos". Hmmm. I could go in to much detail on my abdominal region... but I won't. In fact, I think I've already said too much.

Always need more Poetry...

I've decided that I need more poetry on my blog, so I've dug out my anthology and found this emo-quene. (I reckon quene is a very funky spelling of the more common queen - and I haven't seen it before... does that make it punk?) Anyway, this one's for Phil, in his state of intense emo-ness.

Turning Heads

Walking down the street
Fumbling for the car keys
Moaning mildly at the useless park.

Am I any different?
Don’t I look the same?
Tell me now, what’s it to you anyway?

Walking down the mall
Spying savings
Indulging my cravings

I can’t be invisible
I can’t avoid the emptiness
Is there no excuse?

On the bus
You’ll walk past
Better off three to a seat.

Bliss?
Ignorance?
Never together.

Watch me now
Look me in the eye
Speak.

I’m always turning heads
They always twist
Desperate to look

The other way.

Ok, so it's all pretty lame but what the hell, we all need a bit of poetry in our lives - especially of the kind that doesn't rhyme.

Boot Camp

I must say, the whole mid-semester break thing has been top-notch. Well, kind of. The fact that I've been working between 5 and 10 hours a day and still not getting a helluva lot done can put a bit of a dampener on things (especially when they call it a "break"). But it has meant that I've been able to get back out running and try to recover the fitness I had or maintain what little fitness I have left.

It started with Sunday and hill sprints up Brightwater Road. I used to be able to do over 10 of them. On Sunday I was onto my fifth rep and made it halfway before conking out. Just like a car out of petrol or something. It was most depressing to realise just how much I leg strength I have lost. I had footy training after that, which is always a bit of fun - mind you I feared for my ribs when Mark Wolfert fell on me during one of my potentially lethal tackles (lethal for me generally), but alas I am fine.

Monday was a half hour sleep in before hitting the road: my 16km loop around Blackers, Kingston Beach, Huon Highway and all that. I did it in 1h23m - only 7 or 8 mins slower than my pb, so all is not lost. I mean, I finished it.

Tuesday was back to the Brightwater Rd hill. This time I managed to eke out the fifth one, but it hurt. It hurt a lot. Then I had footy training which involved a very pleasant game of touch footy. Should be more of that, I reckon.

Then today, I thought I'd taper down and do the 14km Howden Rd circuit. Lots of lovely hills there. Don't know what time I did - just over an hour I'd say, so still in the ball park.

I'm still cut about my watch getting stolen. Dammit. I was umpiring at Brighton and I got back into the rooms to find my good sports watch (21st b'day present) gone. I told the match manager from Brighton and he couldn't give a damn. He gibbered on about how he might pass on the news to the club president who would keep an eye out for it and how they had lost the keys to the umpires' changerooms so that was the reason why people could wander in and out of there willy-nilly. So there they are, the frickin Brighton Footy Club, they can afford to pay one of their players a grand a game (and fix up all his debts, or so I heard) and they can't even afford to sort out a way of locking a fricking door for the umpires' changerooms. We do get treated like crap. Excrement. You get the idea - not happy.

So, I'm not sure what times I'm doing, which is not so much a problem for bragging rights, etc, but rather to get an idea of whether I'm actually fit or not.

So with all that said and done, I would have cracked about the fifty km mark since Sunday. Haven't done that mileage since preseason.

Oh, and Bucket invested in a gym for Nick's new place, which I put to use on Sunday and Tuesday. Three sessions a day on Sunday and Tuesday - solid work I reckon. But anyway, the plan is to get buff with the gym. I've got a lot of work to do cos I'm a complete runt.

So it's been a bit of a boot camp lately. Run. Run. Drop and gimme twenny. Run.

IC Engine Analysis begins making sense

There are developments on the IC engine analysis. The news is not good. I figured out what the problem is and now all my data makes sense. This is not good because it means that I have a) to do a lot more work to do the analysis for all seven loads, rather than just for the two that seemed to work (but were actually wrong, which means that I've had to start again) and b) I now have nothing to write about in the discussion because everything has worked out as expected. I can always write about what I had for breakfast, but then I have nothing to write on this blog...

Chapter 2 or something

I ran off while the cops were there. I didn't want to have anything to do with the drugs they were gonna find. It was Clacks and Jaba. Clacks was probably dead by now, I couldn't be sure, and Jaba was probably hoping to get back to sleep. I slipped the note to the chick cop. She read it and nodded.

Ten minutes later Jaba was being marched out in cuffs. I kept doing blockies in my little blue Datsun 1200. Sometimes I wished I smoked or I did drugs or something that would kill me sooner. I didn't want to know what was going to happen to Jaba. In some ways I want to bad to live on the edge, in others, crap, I don't want to live at all.

I drove past the bottle-o and forked out thirty bucks for a cube of red bitters and pulled up at the beach. The road ran parallel to the beach for about a k. Opening my first tinnie, I leant my seat back and drained the first and the second and the third. Three in ten. It'd hit soon and I'd pass out. I sank another and swore at the dog as it had a leak on the side of my car. I got out to chase and stumbled. That was it. Two in the afternoon and already gone.

I awoke covered in glass. It was a starry night. Fish was standing above me with a foot and a half of brass tubing. I was on the bitumen, next to my car. My head hurt like hell and blood seemed to be everywhere. Tampa was standing behind, as if he were the ringleader. But there was only the two of them.

"You wanna pay for the gear?"
Kick in the guts.
"Five grand."
Shoulder.
"Now."
Arm.
"Jaba owes us."
"I'm not Jaba."
"You live with him."
"Not any more."
Kick in the guts again and brass tubing to the head.

I awoke and it was morning. The sheets were white. The tubes were clear. The nurses were too busy to be pretty.

Tears shed as engi boys drown

We lost. Dammit. The law boys beat us by about forty (or so) points in the annual engi v law footy game. Despite Jono Haynes dominating and taking mark of the year and a tireless effort in the midfield by Captain Plogga, we still went down by about seven or eight goals. A good warm up for the upcoming north v south game.

Now for all of you who missed that game, AFL grand final day is when the biggest event is occurring - Lonnie Reformed take on the undefeated might of the CRCKingston up somewhere in Lonnie. Based on training appearances us southern boys are seeming a little arrogant, which could lead to an ugly upset. The pride of the south is on the line, so a call to any (un)fit southerner interested in a kick to get along to training (Sunday, 3pm, Blackman's Bay Primary).