Not dead, just busy

Man, that's almost a record... over a month since our last update. It's not cos we're not doing anything, in fact it's the opposite, we're busy as hell. We survived the girls birthday parties, they were decent hits actually, and for the last few weeks we've been planning Cam's event. But before all that here's a quick summary of the last month or so...

• Jo and I played together in the Bronte Tennis Club Mixed Doubles tournament. We played first on Friday night and won, although it was more of a struggle than we expected, 6-2 7-6 (tie-break). This put us into the main round and we had to play against the 2nd seeds at the club the next day. We were creamed 6-0, 6-1, and we think they were going easy on us, they ended up in the semi's, but they were 2nd seeds so given that they beat us they should have won... quitters.
• Jo has signed up for the winter season tennis... and no... they don't play in the snow. The courts that the kids had lesson at a year ago are covered with an inflatable roof in the winter so Jo can continue her intense tennis odyssey into the cooler weather. Frankly I'm a tennis widower, she's been playing most days during the daylight and then often in the evening too. I'm stoked though, she's getting a nice little tennis chick body to go with the racket and cute skirt.
• The kids appear to all have great teachers this year. A major improvement for Abs who has a teacher who actually cares about her performance and is prepared to discuss any issue with us. Compared to last years complete loss, Miss Whatever was a complete idiot, this is a revelation for us and great for Abs too.
• Halloween is coming and we have some costumes sorted out. Jo is also being pushed, by the rest of us, to kit the house out a bit more this year, just in case it's our last here. So we're eyeing off giant spiders, zombies for the lawn and a witch to attach splatter-style to the front bumper of the car (like we ran her over).
• It's Autumn and football is back in full swing. I watched the AFL Granie at a mates place, it started at midnight on Friday here. Was a crap game but glad that Geelong won one or a change, always had a soft spot for them, dunno why. NFL is on and after 5 games my Patriots are 5-0 and my wanna-bees, the Tennessee Titans, are doing better than expected at 3-1 (they've had a by). I have tickets with a friend to go see a Buffalo Bills game (vs Baltimore Ravens) in a few weeks so that should be cool. Grid-iron is the shit, I love this game now. I always had an instant dislike for the game before coming here. I think that enjoying any type of game without having grown up on it is pretty much impossible. What makes a game interesting is not just knowing the rules, that's just the technical part of it and not much fun, but it lies in understanding the back-stories. For example it's much more interesting watching a game when you know the opposition quarter-back is coping some heat for poor passing and everyone thinks he's over paid... or that the key wide-receiver is under a drug cloud... or you watched one of the line backers win the college equivalent of the Brownlowe last season and now he plays for your team, is he gunna handle the hype? I guess what I'm saying is something sports fans already know, that the game itself is only part of the end-to-end experience. Once you're soaked in the news, daily topics, stats and line-ups you get a lot more out of it than you might have expected. Understanding the rules, and how the teams execute on game-day is only a small part of the enjoyment. The human factor is far more interesting. No small wonder I almost exclusively listen to sports radio in the car now...
• I love North America, here I can set of model rockets to 1000 feet from the baseball diamond across the street and buy guns for my kids that actually shot stuff, albeit Nerf bullets. We shot off 6 rockets last weekend and filmed it with the new video camera in super-slow-mo, the vids are pretty cool, I'll post em soon. The Nerf gun is a 1.2 meter monster sniper rifle that shoots foam darts very accurately over 30 feet. It comes with two magazines for loading the ammo, full on clips, a scope and and has a cocking action that rivals an M-60. This stuff rocks.
• I'm going to Las Vegas with 3 of my work buddies. Jo has agreed to cut the leash for 4 days and as of Nov 1st I'm down and dirty in the adult Disney that is the capital of Nevada. We're staying at the Venetian and planning on some shooting and stretch-Hummer-limo action before hitting the tables in an effort to take it all.

More later, we have more to prepare for Cam's birthday and after we execute I expect we'll have another post with some more pics. Above is the giant mural we painted for one of the party games. Various parts of the mural are targets and fall down when you shot them with a Nerf gun, like the stage coach wheels, jail bars and water tank. Should be a hoot.

Andy, out.