Tonight us and Fiona went along to the finals of Skate-turion - a roller derby tournament.  It was surprisingly fun!  The only exposure I've had to roller derby was the movie Whip It that the sweetie and I watched a couple of weeks ago.  So didn't have too much idea what was going on to start with.  But after reading up on some of the rules in breaks, and just watching, I got a bit of an idea and it was quite fun to watch.

We arrived just as the C-Division game was finishing so didn't see much of that.  Then moved into the other room to see the B-Division and A-Division finals.

The B-Division final was between Perth and Canberra.  It was a pretty good game, but Perth was much better than Canberra, and won convincingly.

Mary Fagdalene from Perth Roller Derby.  She was really good.

Then the A-Division game started.  And oh my!  Those girls were awesome!  Canberra made a very strong start and one of their jammers, ShortStop, made the most amazing moves.  The crowd went crazy.  But Brisbane played very well and hit the lead and managed to keep it, although Canberra did make a come back, it just didn't quite work.

1337!

ShortStop

We were there for four hours.  Note for next time: take a cushion to sit on!  Most people had done it before, so were well prepared.  Us, not so much.  heh.  Also, the whistles blowing were super loud, which hurt my sensitive ears somewhat.

But it was great fun event.  We might just have to see more bouts some time..!

Last night we had our work ball, which was Alice in Wonderland themed.  Definitely a lot more people dressed up for this one than the last one.

Seven of our group.  There was a lot of red!  Doc's Mad Hatter was pretty awesome.

Got to wear the Lego heart necklace Nat got for me a while back

A cheshire cat and another mad hatter

The room and tables looked lovely

For entree I had "wood roasted hot smoked king salmon, cucumber, red radish, dill scented creme fraiche, betroot jelly", which was very nice

For mains I had "prosciutto wrapped corn fed chicken breast, broccolini with almond broad bean and herb risotto, chervil oil" which was also pretty nice

Desert was the same for everyone - "chocolate pecan tart, chocolate fudge, clotted cream".  I'm not a fan of pecans so this didn't do it for me.

Stu hid out in one of the side rooms for a while to escape the noise and crowds, and ended up playing a couple of games of chess (which he won).

The band was pretty good and not too loud which made for a nice change - didn't have to yell to hear each other.  Only complaint was a tad too much emphasis on seventies music.

Was a great fun night, with good company, food and champagne, singing and dancing.

Today we didn't do much, other than going to visit Noah and Stu and do our food shopping.

So Stu told me about this a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't bother nominating anything because it looked like it was pretty much all covered from a John Williams perspective ;)

Tonight I voted:

• Titanic by Horner, James as performed in Titanic
• The Hunt for Red October Score by Poledouris, Basil as performed in The Hunt for Red October
• The Man from Snowy River Score by Rowland, Bruce as performed in The Man from Snowy River
• Back to the Future Film Trilogy Score by Silvestri, Alan as performed in Back to the Future Film Trilogy
• Shakespeare in Love Score by Warbeck, Stephen as performed in Shakespeare in Love
• Music from Harry Potter Movies by Williams, Doyle, Hooper, and Desplat as performed in Harry Potter
• Jaws Score by Williams, John as performed in Jaws
• Jurassic Park Score by Williams, John as performed in Jurassic Park
• Raiders of the Lost Ark Score by Williams, John as performed in Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Gladiator Score by Zimmer/Gerrard as performed in Gladiator

omigosh it was hard!  My first cull had over thirty movies in it.  Got it down to twenty three.  Then cut out music that was not written for the film (which sadly included things like Symphony No. 3 by Camille Saint-Saëns from Babe, Finlandia by Jean Sibelius from Die Hard 2 and everything from Fantasia 2000).  Cut a couple more.  And eventually decided on the movies above.  

These were my runners up:

• Batman Score by Elfman, Danny
• Inception Score by Zimmer, Hans
• James Bond Theme by Norman, Monty
• Music from Star Trek Movies by Eidelman/Giacchino/Goldsmith/Horner/McCarthy/Rosenman  <-- be good if they'd narrowed this down to Jerry Goldsmith's
• Star Wars Score (includes music from all 6 films) by Williams, John    <-- I'm hoping this will be popular enough to make it in from other people's votes
• Superman Score by Williams, John  <-- and this too

Thursday morning I headed up to Sydney.  Stopped in at Picton and watched David feed all the snakes.

Then we headed to the parent's place for lunch with Aunty Rhonda.

And then across to Rookwood for Nana's funeral.

The whole family was there which was really nice.  The funeral itself was lovely.  My mum and uncles read a beautiful eulogy and Ken had put together a wonderful slide show of Nana's life.

Lots of people hung around for the wake in the Reflections cafe.

But the shocker of the day for me was finding out I have another cousin.  

!!!

Mum was reading the names of all the grandkids during the eulogy, and it included a name I'd never heard of.  Later I asked mum about it.  Turns out my uncle had had him after he'd separated from his first wife but it was all a bit awkward so he doesn't get talked about in the family.  But how did I not know about this at all??  Sheesh!  Apparently he was at the funeral too.  So that was all very bizarre.

So then we battled peak hour traffic and went with Diana and Graham to the Tradies for dinner.  Every time I've been there in the past few years it's been different.  Seems they've completed their renovations now, and there's a huge front entrance now.  The roast of the day was pork, so five of us except David had it :)  

Then back to my parents' to pick up stuff, then back to Picton to pick up my car, and then home.  I was super tired, but made it safely, with Harry to keep me company.  Got home a bit after midnight.

So after spending two days fixing problems, I finally got to do my scheduled work today.  I was hoping to have it done by about 2pm so I could go home early, but alas didn't finish til after 4pm, and even then I didn't finish because some other people were doing some other work which was getting in the way.

Cough if anything is getting worse not better. 

*sigh*

Movable Type 5.2.2.  Trying to mark comments as spam from the comments RSS feed - clicking on "junk".  Multiple spam messages on the one entry, so multiple attempts to publish to the same entry.  Get these errors:

Renaming tempfile '/path/to/page.html.new' failed: Renaming '/path/to/page.html.new' to '/path/to/page.html' failed: No such file or directory

And then the page is deleted until I go into the entries management and republish it.

This is so fricken fail.  And yet I can't find anyone talking about the same thing, other than the odd comment in people's blogs where people have obviously had the same problem when commenting on an entry at the exact time as someone else.

Yesterday we had a pretty quiet morning.  But it was such a lovely day we decided to go out to the club and try out our new caravan.  So went out and enjoyed the sunshine, and had drinks and dinner with some of the other people there, then played some cards then went to bed.  Turns out sleeping in a caravan is a lot more comfortable than sleeping in a tent!  Who knew?  We also managed to lock ourselves out of it within ten minutes of arriving.  Thank goodness John was there with a spare key! 

This morning after quite a long lie-in (it was freezing!) we got ready then helped out with some hazard reduction, as well as having some sausages for lunch.

Came home and called the parents, only to hear the bad news that the prognosis is not very good for Dad.  So that made me pretty sad.

Did our food shopping then came home and found my betta, that I've only had for six weeks, had died.  More sadness.

Then spent *ages* making up some lasagnas, only to have the sweetie eat a good chunk of my leftovers (mine had white sauce and lactose containing cheese).  Blah.

Then lost it cause the house was a pigsty.

It's only 9:30pm, but it feels a lot later.  Not sure how I'm going to be able to stay up..

Much better day today.  That work I needed done by Wednesday morning?  Finished it at 4:30pm.  So that's when I went home.

Watched an Air Crash Investigations episode I'd never seen before - the shooting down of Korean Air 007 in 1983.  Quite tragic how such a simple mistake cost the lives of so many people.

Had a pretty awful day today.  Woke up at 4:15 and never got back to sleep.

So couldn't concentrate very well on some work I need to get done before Wednesday morning.

And then I got cornered by a developer who wanted me to look at a problem of theirs, and I got stuck with it because other people were away or on training.  Did I mention I have a heap of work I need to do before Wednesday morning?

*sigh*

Came home feeling very stressed to the point of feeling queasy :(

This evening at least was productive - the usual washing, pool chlorinating, kitchen tidying, bathroom cleaning, rubbish removal, leftover eating, as well as some jigsawing.

As seen on Boing Boing the other day

D:\>tracert -h 80 216.81.59.173

Tracing route to FIN [216.81.59.173]
over a maximum of 80 hops:

<snip>
 13 240 ms 240 ms 241 ms 216.66.0.26
 15 287 ms 278 ms 277 ms Episode.IV [206.214.251.1]
 16 280 ms 298 ms 341 ms A.NEW.HOPE [206.214.251.6]
 17 285 ms 280 ms 281 ms It.is.a.period.of.civil.war [206.214.251.9]
 18 277 ms 296 ms 399 ms Rebel.spaceships [206.214.251.14]
 19 279 ms 279 ms 277 ms striking.from.a.hidden.base [206.214.251.17]
 20 368 ms 356 ms 281 ms have.won.their.first.victory [206.214.251.22]
 21 344 ms 282 ms 304 ms against.the.evil.Galactic.Empire [206.214.251.25]
 22 310 ms 338 ms 365 ms During.the.battle [206.214.251.30]
 23 336 ms 336 ms 286 ms Rebel.spies.managed [206.214.251.33]
 24 309 ms 313 ms 371 ms to.steal.secret.plans [206.214.251.38]
 25 379 ms 392 ms 440 ms to.the.Empires.ultimate.weapon [206.214.251.41]
 26 300 ms 287 ms 287 ms the.DEATH.STAR [206.214.251.46]
 27 303 ms 284 ms 290 ms an.armored.space.station [206.214.251.49]
 28 289 ms 281 ms 360 ms with.enough.power.to [206.214.251.54]
 29 390 ms 401 ms 423 ms destroy.an.entire.planet [206.214.251.57]
 30 290 ms 287 ms 286 ms Pursued.by.the.Empires [206.214.251.62]
 31 370 ms 389 ms 450 ms sinister.agents [206.214.251.65]
 32 340 ms 327 ms 377 ms Princess.Leia.races.home [206.214.251.70]
 33 334 ms 293 ms 309 ms aboard.her.starship [206.214.251.73]
 34 290 ms 297 ms 281 ms custodian.of.the.stolen.plans [206.214.251.78]
 35 278 ms 284 ms 281 ms that.can.save.her [206.214.251.81]
 36 280 ms 276 ms 283 ms people.and.restore [206.214.251.86]
 37 282 ms 281 ms 278 ms freedom.to.the.galaxy [206.214.251.89]
 38 278 ms 280 ms 280 ms 0-------------------0 [206.214.251.94]
 39 280 ms 284 ms 285 ms 0------------------0 [206.214.251.97]
 40 286 ms 287 ms 301 ms 0-----------------0 [206.214.251.102]
 41 361 ms 389 ms 403 ms 0----------------0 [206.214.251.105]
 42 278 ms 282 ms 278 ms 0---------------0 [206.214.251.110]
 43 286 ms 276 ms 282 ms 0--------------0 [206.214.251.113]
 44 299 ms 281 ms 282 ms 0-------------0 [206.214.251.118]
 45 279 ms 283 ms 281 ms 0------------0 [206.214.251.121]
 46 282 ms 279 ms 282 ms 0-----------0 [206.214.251.126]
 47 367 ms 289 ms 349 ms 0----------0 [206.214.251.129]
 48 386 ms 400 ms 404 ms 0---------0 [206.214.251.134]
 49 402 ms 403 ms 286 ms 0--------0 [206.214.251.137]
 50 285 ms 280 ms 281 ms 0-------0 [206.214.251.142]
 51 280 ms 277 ms 281 ms 0------0 [206.214.251.145]
 52 284 ms 286 ms 284 ms 0-----0 [206.214.251.150]
 53 283 ms 283 ms 282 ms 0----0 [206.214.251.153]
 54 284 ms 284 ms 280 ms 0---0 [206.214.251.158]
 55 286 ms 285 ms 285 ms 0--0 [206.214.251.161]
 56 288 ms 323 ms 358 ms 0-0 [206.214.251.166]
 57 381 ms 373 ms 372 ms 00 [206.214.251.169]
 58 282 ms 339 ms 346 ms I [206.214.251.174]
 59 284 ms 279 ms 283 ms By.Ryan.Werber [206.214.251.177]
 60 281 ms 284 ms 285 ms When.CCIEs.Get.Bored [206.214.251.182]
 61 285 ms 282 ms 284 ms read.more.at.beaglenetworks.net [206.214.251.185]
 62 290 ms 286 ms 284 ms FIN [216.81.59.173]

Trace complete.