Icy and snow
The Winter Olympics are Olympicing, and it’s quite nice to see Australia compete in something we are so effortlessly terrible at. Australia is not generally a snowy place, except in the mountains and then only in the wintertime – not for us the year round snow of some places, or the slushy streets of others. So therefore, a wintery sporty person is pretty unusual, and our standards are uniformly low.
I don’t want to cast aspersions upon our Aussie Athletes, mostly because doing so would result in my being deported. We are, for some reason best known to someone who isn’t me, a Sporting Nation and therefore we Glory in Sport in a way that would be creepy if it wasn’t so damn National Pridey.
Coverage of the games over the last couple of days has focused almost entirely on one of our sporting gals who landed herself a gold medal by not falling over while landing, which is nice for her. Well done lady.
I enjoy the winter games usually, because it’s stuff we don’t tend to see, and there’s a far higher chance of amusing falling over than there is in say, cricket. Nothing warms my heart like a lass in a tiny dress landing on her bum on the ice. I’m a terrible person, but you knew that. Sadly, coverage this year is mostly things we’re okay at, with miffed commentators barely holding their dismay as we are placed 9th.
Really, as a nation, we should be happy they even let us play. Since most of our wintery sports people train outside Australia most of the time (due to the aforementioned lack of snow here), much of the population has never heard of them. The only reason anyone remembers the gold medal of Bradbury is because he got it when the rest of the field fell over.
The commentators of the ice skating are so amazingly bias toward Australia too, which is part hilarious, part irritating. A flawless skate by another nation might be greeted with a “excellent” or “well done”. If they fall over, the commentators will scream “Oh they’ve lost it, they’ve lost it!”. Our skater lands on her arse and slides practically off the ice and we hear “Slight slip up there”.
I’m having terrible trouble finding a highlights package of the falling over bits though.
Downhill, very fast.
One of my greatest memories of childhood is the great Billy Cart race. For you American people reading this, a billy cart is a soapbox racer. I think. You people don’t speak English proper.
Anyway, the house here is at the top of a hill, with a long driveway. A very hard left turn at the end of the drive takes you down a steep road, unmade, which runs on the downhill for a good kilometer at least. I don’t remember how old I was when this took place, probably around 6. My brother and a few of his friends had built billycarts, and they decided that a race starting at the house and ending at the bottom of the hill in the road was in order.
So basically, 4 or 5 ten year olds pushed off and rattled, rolled and wobbled down this road. They got up to great speeds, one of them came off the road and hit a telegraph pole with such force he was thrown out of the cart and into the fence. Good speed, that was called. The carts mostly consisted of seats from primary school chairs (any aussie knows exactly the plastic seat I mean), a couple of cross beams to stick the wheels to, a rope on the front beam for steering and a beam down the middle holding it all together. I’ve since heard that some people had brakes built in, but for my brother and his mates they braked by dropping their feet to the road and waiting to stop.
I was reminded about this on “Can We Help?” tonight, where a couple of blokes in a shed lamented that kids these days don’t ride carts anymore. It’s true, and it’s a shame. A good, active, creative outdoor activity that has fallen out of favour.
Now, I’m not saying kids should be allowed to ride carts down roads anymore, we knew there would be no traffic at the time is all. But there’s a million soft grassy slopes to ride.
I’d like to see a Billy cart revival – blokes in sheds building carts with their kids and taking them to a park or reserve to race them. Lots of nice outdoor fun! So if you know a kid, make em a cart.
Vet’nry
At no time is the difference in the personalities of my dogs more apparent than at the vet. Mama and I took the noble hound and the pudgy collie in today for their check ups and injections.
First, Stitch loves car rides. Loves them. So exciting. Could be going anywhere, get to see so much stuff and oh lord oh lord oh lord another dog! LOOK LOOK ANOTHER DOG! Noddy, on the other hand, tends to look like he’s just been thrashed with a stick and is about to get a second round. He is, admittedly, better than he was as a younger dog, when he would have to be manhandled into the car. He leaps in quite happily now, but does spend most of the trip trying to escape out of the rear window. Stitch spends the trip with his head between the two front seats, crying with excitement and trying to look at everything at once, while thwacking Noddy on the head with his wagging tail.
Once at the vet clinic, they are again quite marked in their personalities. They both trot quite happily up to the door, but Noddy digs his fuzzy little feet in on the doorstep and refuses to go any further. Stitch bounds in, ready for love and attention from the nurses. The smells of other dogs drive him into a high pitched whine of thrill. He can’t possibly sit, can’t sit, nope can’t sit, too excited, more pats. Noddy, having been dragged into the waiting room, then has to be lifted onto the scale because frankly this is all too scary and he tends to lose the use of his legs.
Once in the examination room (they go in together), Stitch is lifted onto the table and spends a very happy few minutes pretty much ignoring the vet while he peers out the window. Noddy spends this time with his paws on the table to see what’s being done to Stitch, or else hiding behind Mamas legs, or my bag, or under the table, or under the vet. Not fussed really, hiding is good. Stitch is usually all good for the ear, teeth and eye check, but once the belly squeezing and temperature readings start he gets a bit less enthused about the whole experience and is very ready to jump down once the exam is over. He then waits by the door with his lead in his mouth, crying. Ready to go now please.
Noddy becomes a dead weight with awkward legs when lifted onto the table, and then tends to go for the falling down approach to problem management. At every chance he tries to make a jump for the floor, only to be thwarted by people who seem to be able to read his mind, and keep a grip on his harness.
At the end of the exam, Nodders is more than glad to accept a handful of liver treats in compensation for his pain and suffering. Stitch tends to refuse these, preferring an ear rub or chest scratch. Noddy also likes to try and get the lid off the liver treats jar while his health is chatted about. Crafty little sod.
With Stitch declared in fine fettle and Noddy on a diet (again), we leave the vets in a tangle of leads and legs and chaos. The way home is much the same, with Stitch staring out of the windscreen and crying, and Noddy trying to crawl out the back window. Such little nutters my boys.
(PS. Veterinarian is pronounced “Vet’nry” (vet nn ree) in this house, as a nod to James Herroit)
Notes from your friendly Huntard.
I’ve played Hunters in World of Warcraft from the outset, with some side dabbling in Shamen and the occasional druid. Hunters remain my favourite, despite the fact that in WoW, hunters are considered “easy mode” and are referred to as Huntards. Once you get to level 10, you can start to choose talents depending on how you wish to play. For hunters, there’s marksmanship, survival and beast mastery. The lowest considered of these is Beast Mastery.
Hello from your Beast Mastery Huntard.
I really enjoy WoW, I like to wander and explore and level up. I don’t take it as SOOPER SERIOUS as I’m supposed to. I don’t group with other players, I don’t run dungeons or battlegrounds. This is why i’m Beast Mastery, because then I don’t have to put up with the other people.
Why play an MMO if you don’t want to play with others? Thing is I DO want to play with others, but overall I find being abused for pulling the wrong creature or walking into the wrong place or just existing in the wrong general area is tiresome, and not what I want to pay my monthly fee for.
See, for me, WoW is supposed to be a fun break from life. Escapism, something to get sucked into and forget your problems. With the vast majority of players now treating it like life and death importance, I think old school players like me – casual, in it for a laugh, are getting jaded. Well I am. What’s the point in running a dungeon if the party leader spends the entire time screaming about retards and spastics who can’t play.
So I reckon the time is here to really and honestly consider where I’m heading with WoW. Finding people who don’t care about dying in a group is getting too hard, and I don’t pay a monthly to be abused. I would have liked to get my main toon up to level 80, but I think I can put her to rest at 75, knowing she was fun while she lasted.
Seventh
I don’t tend to look at the photos I took last year on Black Saturday. They pop up when I scroll picasa, or check my flickr feed. I’m going to share one with you now.
The photo there doesn’t begin to describe the feeling of watching Kinglake burn. The clenched gut knowing that people we love and care about were trapped up there, with no way of knowing if they were alive or dead.
Once the sun went down, the power went off and we sat in the loungroom, myself and my family, and listed to Jon Faine on the ABC – Jon Faine who normally we would hear in the mornings on weekdays was on air on a Saturday night. It was both comforting and scary. I checked and rechecked the CFA incident website on my pager, we went from ember attack warning to no warning to ember attack warning and I don’t know if any of us slept.
I didn’t attend memorials, and nor will I be watching the sugar loaded BS special reports on tonight. One of the strongest memories I have is watching a news team badger a man who’d just lost his entire family. They wanted tears, they got them and to this day I hold most of the media in contempt for their actions.
My love and thoughts are with everyone who is remembering their hell today, be it trying to get out through the fires, or losing loved ones.
Strathewan is being reborn, many places are. Let’s please now look ahead, help the towns recover, help the people recover and move into the future with hard lessons learned, but learned well.