... A Short Outage and a Curse Confirmed

Telstra was up to their shenanigans again on Wednesday and I was off the air at home and unable to post to The Tales.
Luckily I saved my scrawlings and you can read them below but be warned - in this fast paced modern internet world they may have aged somewhat since Wednesday. My apologies if they seem quaint and naive.

In other news the curse on my jumper is confirmed. I refrained from wearing it while I watched the Anzac day footy and we walloped the Dons. I did think about donning the jumper when we were 50 points up and Essendon promptly scored 3 goals in succession so I banished the thought.

From Wednesday April 23, 2008:

... Free Bikkies and Forced Rest
I made a little trip to the Corporate Castle yesterday for some free bikkies and 15 minutes of forced rest. Yes it's flu shot time again.
It's my third year running and I haven't had any major flu in that time so I'm sticking with it. Besides, one can eat a lot of free bikkies in the 15 minutes that they make you sit around to see if you'll die from the serum.


The day before I had my driver's license upgraded and was surprised to find that you can smile in the photo. I did even though I was worried that my hair may have been a bit unruly given that it's overdue for a trim. The photo has to represent me for 10 years and they say that since it's digital now I may even be able to use it to represent my late 40's self at the next upgrade.


I've popped back in to my spiritual home at Sandringham a few times recently. First to hook everyone up to the new printer and then to fix it after Mr Prada jammed it all up - although I do suspect that Days of our Libraries may have been playing saboteur since the printer is getting more workroom attention than she is.


The Knee Update
The license renewal happened because I had to kill time waiting for a Physio appointment.
Apparently I have great thighs for extra knee support and all I've done is pinched the cartilage. I should be back scoring again in two to three weeks.

... The Cursed Jumper

So this is the story. When I play soccer on Thursday nights it's always white shirts versus coloured shirts. My Svetlanaland national soccer team shirt does nicely as my white shirt as despite its checkered pattern it is predominately white.
I decided to get myself a Collingwood jumper to wear on those occasions wen I am on the coloured shirt team since it's predominately black - plus I love the irony of a black and white shirt being coloured.

The debut of my wonderful new jumper was at soccer two Thursdays ago. Coincidence.

I donned it a second time for last Sunday's footy match. Still there are extenuating circumstances - in the history of my footy match attendance with The Great Sandro the results have been 50/50, despite ladder position, so I can accept that last week was just one of those things.

However...

Last night was ridiculous. Sure we played better generally but half of Norths goals came from turnover after stupid mistakes from Collingwood, and then there was the unbelievable bounce in the centre that goes completely in Norths favour and gifts them a goal, AND to top it all off Didak misses a simple shot from right in front that could have stolen the lead back again. I was quietly weeping at the death of my jumper-wearing dream while beside me Legion2 was noisily exploding in rage.

I am now thinking that the sweet smell of burning polyester elastane will be shortly drifting about my flat. I'm sure that even Ms Magpie, who doesn't believe in superstitious mumbo jumbo and told me to wear the jumper anyway this week, will now be clamouring for it's demise.

I can tell you for sure that I will not be wearing it while I watch the Anzac Day game this Friday.


In other news
I made a Friday night visit to LURG, the League of Unreasonable Gentlemen. For a little game of Man o' War. No wait that link was wrong try this one, damn not that one either, here's the right one. Afterwards I had a nice chat with Camo Spice and caught up with Redneck Ben for the first time in years.

I'm also in a battle to reclaim my stolen parking space at home as someone else has had the temerity to park in the space I have claimed (it's an odd echo of the situation at Sandringham with Mr Prada stealing my spot all the time) and I've had to revert to parking in the spot that I own. Except someone else has taken a fancy to that spot and my car is now a vagrant of the carpark.

... The Guide Updated

Not a Lot has been happening so I am going to release the next chapter of The Guide to cover the fact that I have no content.

There was a Saturday night poker game with Legions2-3, Badger, BrotherStealer, Spare Legion and Legion3's better half. I was late because I found that I had a flat tyre when I went to drive over and instead had to be chauffeured in style by Spare Legion driving with no night vision and using his old glasses which give him a "what's that blob?" level of vision.
I managed to come second in both poker games but more importantly I came home late and then had The Tiger getting me up ridiculously early on Sunday morning.

Speaking of fun Sunday morning activities there's nothing like changing a flat tyre while you have a knee injury.

The afternoon didn't really get better as I headed off to the footy with Legion2, Elfboy, and The Great Sandro. I amusingly ran into Agent Smith outside the ground after we'd been on the phone that morning trying to arrange a time we could meet up.
Collingwood didn't really perform at all and we were subjected to an antarctic gulf stream at the top of the Ponsford stand, so there was not a lot to enjoy for the afternoon.
The evening was much better. After dropping The Great Sandro home I caught up with Rugrat Twin for a late dinner on Victoria Street and ended up getting my hands on the next few volumes of Fables as I had quite enjoyed the first one.

Monday was spent at Beaumaris branch working out their new printing arrangement with Devil's Advocate.

I was back again on Tuesday to teach yet another class with the classy Mr Prada. After escaping from educating the public I made a quick stop at Sandringham and I found that they'd given up all hope of ever seeing me again after I'd not been by in less than a week.
Alas before I could let them bask in my Phillness for very long I was summoned to Brighton to deal with even more printer issues.
Thankfully that evening I was able to get a little stress relief in at gaming when, during the Judge Dredd game, I was able to interrogate all the characters about their woeful behaviour as Judges - something that seems to be fairly common when ordinary people try to roleplay as future law enforcers.

This morning I had the professionals repair the damage that a screw had done to my tyre before cruising in to Brighton to scavenge from their Staff Room Table of Bounteous Food and do a little work as well.

Okay maybe I lied - I guess a bit has been happening.

... Pimping my Hotspot

I spent a reasonable chunk of time Friday morning limping around on my bad knee showing off the wonders of my wireless internet hotspot at Brighton to a gaggle of Stonningtonites.

They seemed suitably impressed with it - particularly with the other-people-set-it-up-rather-than-the-library-IT-person part.

Of course my stunning presentation was cut short by repeated "hey Phill!" problems cropping up and staff vigorously hunting me down to solve them. I didn't even get the chance to try for a thank you lunch from my enrapt audience. Instead I had to hobble down the street for my sustenance.



The Knee Report: Days 2 and 3
Yesterday was a day of hobbling and war story telling. The general feeling was one of tenderness. I received suitable sympathy from Sister Serials, but most others gave me a Supervisor S style of "I warned you about MAMILS" attitude.

Today the knee has been stiffer but also feeling much more like it will heal up quite soon - I would be listed on the footy injury list as TEST (although I'll probably have to skip next weeks soccer).

I'm also currently considering purchasing a cane for myself so I can wave it angrily at the young whippersnappers while muttering things about lack of respect.

... Pop Goes the Knee

Tonights soccer game gave me the delightful opportunity to hear something in my knee go POP-pop.

I may have been trying to get a little too fancy in my attempts to stop another player and was left hopping around in a bit of pain. Luckily SoccerBuddy gave me a shoulder to replace my injured leg and, despite a shoulders inappropriateness as a leg, I made it to the sideline for some quiet time with a bag of ice.

What I think happened is that the joint popped out and then back in - over-stretching the surrounding muscles in the process. The current pain is one of tenderness and overstretched muscles but I shall see how it is in the morning to check for swellings or "bad" pain.

I think I'm lucky and will just have to spend a few weeks off from soccer to let the muscles recover - which is going to play havoc with my goal scoring average.

... The Bus Man's Holiday

The highlight of my last week would have to have been the Bayside RFID Investigation Team boarding the Council Youth Services mini-bus and cruising down the highway to the glorious sounds of Best of the 80's Volumes 1-4.

We were off to experience another RFID tenderer demonstration. This one came with morning tea and lunch which I managed to partake in despite my mild nausea from Supervisor Grand Chief K's erratic "driving".

My one mistake for the day was to do some actual work and ask technical questions. That little slip-up lead to me forgetting to have any of the cakes!! Luckily for me Sonja Roster Queen had stuffed her bag full of wedding-esque cake parcels and I was able to savour the delights of a caramel slice sugar rush on the journey home.

My time at the wheel finally came after we had dropped SGCK off for another "important" meeting. Repaying Sonja Roster Queen's earlier kindness I drove in a manner that caused her to scream her delight at my driving skills.


The rest of the week included: my scoring again at soccer; BestFriendSincePrep forcing me to eat far too much pizza on Saturday night before a board games evening with SpawnOfBestFriendSincePrep playing his newly acquired copy of Mousetrap; a Geektogether memorial Gary Gygax Dungeons & Dragons game; a late night phone talk with a very fluey Svetlana; finished The Urth of the New Sun Gene Wolfe's slightly lackluster sequel to the books of the New Sun; and far too much wrangling of the new printers.