July Review

 A quick July review due to last minute holiday planning.

Some quick miscellaneous topics:

• Commonwealth Games getting cancelled was a bit of a surprise, the cost blowout was not
• The events would have been several hours drive away so we aren't missing much
• Finally the Barbenheimer excitement is dying down - it's not even a clever word combination, and I'm not planning to see either
• Another popular phrase is 'social and affordable' housing
• Even though the Commonwealth Games got cancelled we're still building 1300 houses for 1 billion dollars - at a not so affordable price of $750,000 each
• I understand and agree with the social housing cause for those who are most in need
• I don't really understand what affordable housing means
• Are they given away for free ?
• Are they given away without profit - in which case the government cost is minimal
• In the background we complain about cost of living and rental crisis while simultaneously celebrating every suburb reaching million or multi-million dollar medians and selling for 20% above expectation

A bit of running to get through. I already discussed some of it in the Gold Coast report. I had a quick recovery and managed a 17:45 parkrun the weekend after and some other parkrun achievements:

• A new event at Kilmore
• 300th event
• 83rd event number - now been to every event number in the first 100

I had not committed to the Melbourne half marathon due to the short training time after getting back from holiday, only for it to be sold out months in advance. It's very disappointing they can't even get close to accommodating the demand. In better news I did get to register for XCR Ballarat 15km in early August (already happened as of this review) and Run Prix 10km in late September - should be just enough time to prepare for that I hope.

I think shares haven't moved much besides a terrible 3% drop in two days. Seem to be guaranteed one of these every month or so without fail.

Still a quiet time for sports, the Women's World Cup is on at the moment but there's been very few games on commercial TV and generally low scoring or uncompetitive games so far, maybe it will get a bit better in the knockout rounds.

A bit of activity on the to do list:

• Covid vaccination
• Got my 5th dose and just a headache for two days afterwards this time
• Gold Coast report
• Holiday
• Just left to try and book some football tickets at a reasonable price !
• Still not very excited - mostly all the potential luggage and transport pain to deal with
• MCC membership for another year
• Just another expense to the never ending bills at this time of year
• New monitor
• From last month but haven't unpacked yet !
• New phone
• Samsung A54 won't switch until after holiday in case it gets damaged

Been trying to scale down tasks at work but not too confident how well it will go while I'm away. Already not looking forward to 1,000 emails on the first day back with likely jetlag.

That's it for this month.

• Books
• None
• Movies
• None
• Music
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Good song choices but could have been a bit longer
• 8 out of 10
• TV
• Million Dollar Island
• Pointless Survivor ripoff
• People completed 0 or 1 challenges to make the final 7 out of 100
• 2 out 10
• Rush
• A bit of The Amazing Race ripoff also
• A bit better but still very uninspired challenges to complete each episode
• Often teams had to negotiate their own free transport to travel several hours
• 4 out of 10
• The Blacklist
• A bit of a strange ending but has been a good show over the years
• 8 out of 19
• Video Games
• Nintendo Switch
• Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
• Went back and finished some main story missions I had skipped by accident
• Can just go and try and beat the final boss again now
• Xbox One
• Forza Motorsport 5
• Just filling in a few hours before finishing Zelda