Quiter

I got invited to sing as part of the University of Canberra Choir a couple of months ago. They are preparing to sing Handel's Messiah this Friday.
The problem is, after 2 months of practises, I still don't know the music well enough to be confident to sing it. Its weighing on me a bit, I made a commitment and now I'm backing out on it.
That said, there are a few things I don't like about the choir;
- For most of the last few weeks the practises have been lead by a reserve back up instructor, not the guy with the mad skills.
- Then there's this officious little old lady who wants to run things, but in a 'I've got nothing better to do with my life' way. It kinda pisses me off to tell you the truth. Especially when I get a phone message from her during my work day wanting me to ring her back about some trivial crap
- Its a fairly average choir I would have to admit. I could wonder how much of that is my fault, having never heard let alone sung most of the music before, but there are veterans there who should be on top of their game and who are not.

Anyway I could go on, the performance is this Friday but I've got to be on the radio so its a no go on that front.
A bit disappointing, but there it is.

The last time I played golf

Last week was busy, in a good way. My radio station did its radiothon we were aiming for $35,000 and got $41,381. So all in all an outstanding result.
For my part I was there every night from about 5.30 to 10 answering phones, spruiking, organising stuff. Just glad to be part of it all to tell you the truth. Did a massive show on Friday drive (5 - 7pm) got $1,500 in two hours. Feeling good about that.

Well on Thursday I took time out from my busy schedule to play golf for the Legacy society. Actually I though I was playing golf on the Friday, but a reminder call got me out of the office and into a golf shop for pants, shoes and a crash course lesson as to exactly how you hit a golf ball.
armed with a 15 minute tutorial I rocked up to the golf day.
It was an 'Ambrose' with a 'shotgun start'.
Ambrose - team event, everyone tee's off and the team can then play on from the best shot. The team must play at least 3 drives from each player.
Shotgun Start - Each team is assigned a hole to tee off from, the proceeds in a clock wise direction.

I was crap.
Possibly the worse person on the field but a lengthy margin. I did sink some putts, but that was about the limit of my contribution.
I did have fun though.

A good idea at the time

This has been an insanely busy weekend I have to tell you Bubba's.
My radiostation is holding its annual radiothon, so its been a lot of work at the station answering calls, co-hosting and stuff in between. Its running all week so I'm locked in for a fair bit of it.

But I had some time this morning to go on an actual mountain bike ride. I went up Mt Stromlo it would be about 20kms all up (and down). I consider myself the kind of guy who is happy to take a challange, especially if there are thrills and spills involved.
Well the medium track I took today was no exception. Thinking back on it, I have to ask, just what they hell was I thinking! I mean for the most part going down the track was less than half a metre wide!! One side was up and the other was a steep down!!

Did I mention I was flying down this thing at amout 30kph!
I've had some time to thnk about my actions and I have ask myself, just what the hell was I thinking!?!

Can't wait to try it again though.

Melbourne Cup - Gamblor

Yesterday was Melbourne Cup, the so called 'race that stops a nation'.
Which to be fair its always been a bludge day only in Canberra it is now a public holiday. Hoteliers and restaurateurs complained a bit at the idea, but otherwise everyone else seemed happy enough. Monday was pretty much a write off for productivity as well (lord knows if I was able to I would have bunked off too).
Anyway, Tuesday lunch time and I was down the pub with some mates, one of whom had a clue about horses. 7 of us pooled $20 bucks each as a kitty and we began picking ponies.
There was beer, steak and chips for lunch and good company.

Only one beer fuled bogan fight to be seen and otherwise a pleasant afternoon. The horses ran and thankfully we each made our $20 investment back AND $10 profit. Everyone was jolly excited until we worked out how much we actually make an hour and we had been at the pub for 5 hours.

Such is the vicious grasp of gambling.
Still it was a fun day out. The only problem with the day as far as I could tell, it was almost impossible to find a restaurant or take away joint open for dinner. Perhaps that will change next year.

Changing of the Guard

It is a time of changes and it is with a heavy heart that I wave goodbye to my F-100.
Too be honest I'm not too sorry, there comes a point in every relationship when its time to move on - the skill is being able to recognise that point and being prepared to be honest about it.
In the case of my truck it was the growing regularity of stalls while idling that really did it. I could look past the noise, the total lack of creature comforts (such as a passenger side window that could roll down, or holes in the side of the truck that would blast freezing cold air onto my leg during winter that no amount of detective work could uncover).
I could forgive the absence of power steering, its perchance for fish tailing in the wet weather and the car radio that would only play out of one speaker and that could not be heard at all above 60 kph.
I could forgive all that because it was awesome.
People stopped and looked and starred and wanted a ride. It could haul arse like few things in the world. Its tray could hold over a ton of crap and then some. It was big, it was tough and I was the only person who could drive it.
It was a totally awesome 1979 F-100.

It was also starting to cost me to maintain it. In the last few months it's been in the shop 3 times, all for some fairly major work. I did not take me too long to work out what it was going to cost to fix the current problem (again).
So I had to harden my heart and clear my head. This needed some tough decisions and they had to made without consideration for the truck.
On Saturday I picked up my new wheels, a 2001 Land Rover Feelander. Its not an apples to apples comparison. But it is an improvement and a better ride. The radio works as does the tape deck and CD stacker. There is an abundance of buttons on the dash, the purpose of many I can only begin to guess at. The engine is more sophisticated than the F-100, even though its a 6.
But at the heart of it all is the right vehicle for my needs.

Haven't got a name for it yet, but I am looking forward to driving it home tonight.

Crushing Victory

Conan was once asked to describe the ideal victory, in general terms was something something, crush, something something, kill/destroy, following this was a general raping and looting theme, followed by the promise of a warm teddy, hot chocolate and an early night.

Well thats his view and he's entitled to it. For me victory (at soccer) is a 7 - 4 pantsing of the Red Team. We kicked off in 25C+ with 4 Blue against 5 Red. By the end of the first half we were 1-3 and the Red guys were cocky as all get out. It was hot, I was slighty hung over - but I knew I had a secret weapon.
By the end of the second half (we play 3 halfs, trust me it makes sense) we were up 4-3. but the heat was taking its toll. the Reds had a guy they could rotate in goal so their team would have a reasonably fresh player AT ALL TIMES.
But then my secret weapon arrived, his name is Vince and he's an instructor at my gym and from the Caribbean! There are oak tables and granite cliffs that look like warm butter next to this dude, he is cut! He's also a really friendly guy and likes to play social soccer.
The next half was a humiliation for the Red team. A crushing humiliation!!!
Vince popped in two goals in short order, both totally awesome!

So thats 2 back to back victories for the Blues!! I'm sure the Reds are even now hatching some scheme for pay back...

In the country, people can hear you clearly

This weekend was a weekend of victories!!
Was on the radio on Friday for the drive show (5pm - 7pm) and I totally kicked arse!! Had people ringing me up telling me what an awesome show I was doing it was really great fun!

On Saturday the Blues whomped, those scumbag Reds!! It was totally sweet, and by totally sweet I mean it was totally awesome!! Twas was a 3-0 whitewash. I played my part, being the goal keeper of doom. Plus my foot still hurt from last weekend so I really wasn't all that mobile.
But we won!! 3-0 is the biggest margin we've had for a while. Which makes the victory just that little more extra tasty!!

For the rest of the day and Sunday as well I was helping out at the Murrembateman Field Day. Its a big fair for the local farming community (Murrembateman is about 20 minutes to the West of Canberra. A friend of my ex-wife had asked me a few months ago if could help out, I said no problem. It was an easy gig, just had to read out announcements for stall holders and visitors; you know the usual 'lost child', 'go to stand such and such for a great discount on worms farms' etc...
The people were fantastic, I love volunteering to do this kind of thing - you always meet some really great people. I was even given a meal voucher to buy my lunch. Having gone to a couple of these field days when I was spruiking wine last year it was a lot more enjoyable to be there as a volunteer.
Added to which I brought some great Batlow apples and some pretty impressive fishing lures. Plus I got the drive the truck around the country side, like a real cowboy!!

Now its Monday and I have to wear a tie again.

Awesome Mo Poster

Movember is a coming...
This should help to get y'all in the mood!

Spring is Sprung

Spring in Canberra is my favourite time of year, my next favourite is Autumn.
The weather is warming up, the colours take on a fantastic hue during the morning and evening. It feels as if the world is waking up after Winter.

So I thought it might be fun to review the day on which we all might die, so visit the DEATH CLOCK.

I'm off to find some flowers.

Oh Woe is Me

Isn't it funny when one thing goes wrong it can reverse your whole outlook on life.
Yesterday I got a reaming from my boss, I've learnt a long time ago to not take it personally - but still to go from a high off last week to a chewing out (it wasn't really that bad). Does shake the old confidence though.

That and I just got a message from a girl whose car I backed into with my truck.
Oh boy! I ummed and ahhred about leaving a note... in the end I did the karmically responsible thing. So now I guess I've got to pay the piper on that one.

This morning I'm fighting off the little black dogs trying to make me focus on all the things that have gone wrong or might be seen to have gone wrong lately.

Thank goodness its a sunny day.

Was lost, now found

I used to have this link up on my site, but it dropped off for some reason.
This is The Sartorialist

Its a great Blog about fashion. This chap wanders around with his camera taking pictures of people whose outfits he likes. Its all done in a very positive way.
Enjoy

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

This weekend was an injury fuelled affair.
I sprained my shoulder at the gym on Friday and rolled my ankle at soccer on Saturday. Thankfully the shoulder should be back in action in a day or two. My foot however is sporting a grapefruit sized bruise (twas my right ankle as opposed to the other ankle I broke while rock climbing).
So Sunday was a lazy day.
I almost went nuts.

On Saturday night I invited some friends around for dinner. My first entertaining in the new place and it worked out very well. Its a good sized place, I think at a pinch I could get 8 - 10 people and have them in reasonable comfort. Time will tell.

So I slept in on Sunday, till about 6.30am when I had to get up and get a tea. My foot was sore so I figured a bike ride was not the best idea. I spent Saturday afternoon getting a few bits of furniture for the apartment. The previous night I had discovered I did not have any wine glasses and that my roasting tray was too big for the oven I owned.
So I sat in my chair and watched Neo Genesis Evangaleion until I felt hungry enough for breakfast.
It was a lazy start to a lazy day.

I went out around noon and picked up the extra stuff I needed for my kitchen. ran into an old work colleague and enjoyed a warm but blustery Sunday. After a couple of hours my foot was hurting, so I figured return to base was the order of the day.
The sun being over the yardarm I sat back down with a good book and beer. It was all going well.
Then for no reason, my body wanted salt. Not just any kind of salt - KFC.
I have had KFC twice this year. Only one of those times did I actually eat most of the crap in the box. But for some reason, KFC was the go.
I blame the beer.

But, whatever, I get back in my truck and head on down to the local KFC cess pit of shame. I regretted my decision the moment I walked in. There was a family of fat stupid people cleaning bones off mutant chicken, while their sugared up children were grabbing straws and getting loud. It was dirty, the staff were the usual bred of shit useless young people with attitude and no care for their job or the customer.

I still brought some chicken and it was the worst meal I've had in a long time.
Even the food in America seemed better by comparison.

This morning my shoulder is slightly better and my ankle is still sore and in 3 days time the last of that crap will be clear of my digestive system.

Exercise Surprise

Earlier this year I posted some thoughts about my world view of health and fitness.
As a quick summary I proposed;

• Health is about what you eat, the quality of the fuel you put in the engine.
• Fitness is about the kind of exercise you do, how efficiently your engine uses the fuel.

My suggestion was you can be fit but not healthy and vice versa. If you exercise but still eat stupid, its not going to do you any good. Neither is eating well but never giving your body a chance to use all its muscle groups.

Well I found an article on line that has an interesting view about exercise here. Have a read and let me know what you think?
For myself I suggest it raises a good point, people have different metabolisms that respond to different stimuli. I also suggest that people looking to change their lifestyle should also do some investigation as to how their body responds and work around that.
I would also suggest that people need to stop concentrating on weight loss and focus more on the body shape (in my opinion BMI scales are totally bogus, eg a Mr Universe contender is considered obese by the BMI scale). If you're flabby, diet and exercise will give you muscle tone, more energy and better posture, but muscle mass IS heavier than fat - so your weight probably won't improve, even though you'll look better and feel better.

I try and eat well whenever I can, I also try and exercise regularly. What I can say is I don't waste my time with scales. I focus on how I'm feeling and whether or not I'm having fun!

What I did in Beechworth

This last week gone has been something a wash for me. Have you ever seen the movie 'My blue heaven' (Steve Martin and Rik Moranis). For my money the moral there is we all need a friend who can help us relax and loosen up some and possibly get us into trouble. You know the lovable trouble maker.
Well my own personal Mephistopheles rode into town last week, I love him like a brother - but he has got me to do more wild arse shit than I care to recount out here in the court of public opinion. So we hook up on a Monday night for dinner and a couple of beers.
Then a game or two of pool.
Then it was $10 of coins into the jukebox for a Motely Crue medley and I was so drunk I had to leave my truck in town and walk an hour and half home which I reached by 2am.
Needless to say I was not firing on all cylinders come Tuesday, thank goodness I had a late meeting near my apartment the next day.

So it got me thinking about growing up and having fun. My thoughts coalesced Tuesday night and I concluded I was a total pussy for being an old stick in the mud and taking so long to recover from a night out on the town.
So I picked up the phone and took another buddy of mine up on an offer to join a bike wine tasting tour this weekend just gone.
Helped there were 4 single nurses coming up from Melbourne.

I tell you what Bubba it was some good fun. The location for the tour was a little country town in Victoria called Beechworth, that had as a claim to fame among other things a cell that once held Ned Kelly!
He had gone by the time we arrived, I checked.

Everybody hooked up a local pub that had a tiny pool table in a confined space. I was hurting some from the acupuncture the day before (all to be revealed in a seperate blog) so I was barely drinking anything but lemonade to the complete disgust of my cohorts. On the plus side I was coherent enough to talk to 4 cute nurses, so swings and round abouts.
If you've heard of the Hash House Harriers, you may know that they also do Bike Hash's and this is what the events for the weekend were. Things kicked off around 10am on the Saturday we only rode about 20 km's all up, but we did visit 3 vineyards and 2 breweries.

The day was fantastic, great weather, great company and the ride was very pleasant and broken into easy stages. The ride was graded to allow people to take a hard route should they wish or go easy and enjoy the sights of Beechworth.
Things that stand out in my mind was the Bocce tournament we spontaenously organised during the lunch break. Me and some buddies kicked things off and by the end we had 20 people playing along with us! Everyone was very friendly and welcoming and I think that makes such a positive difference to an outing.
Even though the theme of day was to drink and ride, I piked after the last stop and had a cup of tea with 4 fantastic nurses. I have to tell one thing I find really sexy in a lady is her ability to hold up her end of a conversation. Must be a Gemini thing, but there a lot of girls in Canberra who have trouble with that particular social skill.
I suggest someone with good conversation skills also has a positive social personality, just a thought...

Later that night was footy on the telly, great wine, then off to another pub for disco dancing, getting my arse kicked on a pool table by a couple of good old boys who KNEW there was a lean on the table :)
I had a great time and wasn't too drunk to walk back my hotel and get a good nights sleep.

Sunday morning was a slow recovery day, no hurry to go anywhere. We all reconnected and had brunch on the balcony of a pub Ned Kelly and the Kelly gang once had a brawl in. They must have been sleeping by the time we got there.

So I guess by know your wondering - how did it go with the nurses? Well I don't like to kiss and tell, but I think I have a crush on one very special person in particular.
Lets see where things go! It should be a lot fun finding out!!

Looks familiar

Sometimes it is fun to get another persons perspective on a city.
I know I have fun writing about it. So do the good chaps at The Economist!
Click here for Wellington

Couldn't get the link for Canberra to work...

Yoga

I've been giving the Yoga classes at my gym a go, and I have to tell you they are awesome!!
Originally I figured, why not. Never done yoga before, could be fun, lets see what happens.
Weel I have to tell you, its pretty hard core.
As our instructor says at the start of the class, 'This is not relaxation yoga, you are going to hurt.'

I appreciate his openess. That said though, its only been my abs that have been hurting. The kind of yoga we're doing focuses on the abs and lower back muscles as the core group (which is great because those are the ones my chair bound day job mess up the most easily).
Definately getting flexible though (could come in handy later...) can scratch between my shoulder blades with little or no effort now!

So if you have the chance to try yoga, my advice is give it a go!

Too much coffee

Its easy to get distracted, especially by dumb ideas that have nothing to do with what you are currently being paid for.
That said, this just popped into my head - an idea for a new kids cartoon;
"Toby and Elias"

I'm thinking an educational program, exploring issues and themes such as nature versus nuture, the role of religion in a secular society (with a nod toward church vs state seperation), individuality and the common good, reason and passion - how do they work toward the same goals? Consumerism as well as the collective model.

First episode; "No Mercy for Percy"
Synopsis: Involves Toby and Elias with a giant Go-Go dancing robot (called Greg) who has a fiscal management problem and can't get a loan through a regular bank.
Special Guest Star; Jay Laguia as Greg, Hanibal Lector as 'The Lone Shark'

What do you think? 5 - 8 year olds?

Last night I dreamed I saw...

Canberra is an interesting town.
Like yesterday for example, I'm driving past a car yard and next door is a V2 Rocket getting cleaned up for the War Museum.

This week I've been off with the flu, its been a arse kicker to tell you the truth. Being in my new apartment with zero energy, a fucked up head and an insane passion for salt and potatoes (wtf?).
Actually it was a great excuse to get a lot of house work done. Unfortunately my boss was down on the Wednesday, so I had to drag my sorry arse into the office.
At least I managed to infect other people!!

At what point...

Did you know next month is the 50th anniversary of 'On the Road'?
You need not necessarily care about the book, its plot or characters - there are enough of us for that. But it is a book that has had a lasting impact. It captured a zeitgeist at the perfect moment, it created the Beat Movement.
As Kerouac's publisher said; the night before 'On the Road' was published, Kerouac went to sleep for the last time as a nobody.

But what does it mean? Did it change anything? Does it still change people? Or has this book, like others (Hemingway, Joyce, Miller et al) become a tedious right of passage for the next generation of angry young men. (where are they all these days?)

I hope not, last night I picked up 'Tender is the Night' and began reading it again. I haven't tried to read 'On the Road' for many years (my preference is for 'The Vanity of Duloz') it is a difficult book to read. There is no coherent plot to speak of, don't bother trying the Wikipedia approach, it doesn't map out well and I suggest its an anathema to the spirit of the novel the try and apply a plot arc.
Perhaps it is a feeling you get from the book. The idea of living for sake of living. I'm typing this from my desk at work and the sensation of a lost summer is strong. But I digress, from a literary perspective 'On the Road' is an okay book. From a cultural perspective, its a milestone.
From my perspective, I believe I've lost touch with people in that book. I say this as nothing bad or good, I've become indifferent to the spirit it once evoked.

On the other hand, 'Tender is the Night' is right up my current alley.

Summer Wind

In my ongoing series of good music I now present Mr Frank Sinatra and his version of 'Summer Wind'.
What you should be listening out for is the phrasing, tone and pitch. This is Frank at the top of his game. The voice the strength and the emotion (somewhere between frustration and time to move on). This version, in my book, is the definitive one [though having said that, I'd like to hear the Tony Bennett cover]. Watch, listen and enjoy...