This is the review of May, I think the longest (and so maybe most boring) review by far.
I completed my
40th baking post, which coincidentally was my 250th post overall. The first post was way back in 2007, but I only really started with occasional holiday updates from 2009 and a little bit more often in the last couple of years.
As the first round of the
NBA playoffs have begun we had a Saturday catch up to watch the games being shown on television at Matt's house. The early game was Dallas vs. San Antonio, but it was already into the second half by the time I arrived. The following game over pizza lunch was Houston vs. Portland which ended with a match winning three pointer from Damian Lillard.
The next day was the annual
Puffing Billy race which I have already written about. Other than the freezing cold it was a good day and I had a good result, beating the train easily and finishing well ahead of last year. After the race it was time for more NBA via the much lesser quality web streams at home. It was a packed schedule with three crucial game sevens back to back, Indiana vs. Atlanta, Oklahoma City vs. Memphis and LA Clippers vs. Golden State
During the week the rest of the NBA first round continued and finished, pretty much occupying my evenings during the week in the process. Almost every other series went to seven games too, but the final game in each series was usually a one-sided victory to the home team.
After many months I finally concluded watching
Gossip Girl from start to end. It was fun for about a season or two, then the story lines just became so stupid and ridiculous (a fake cousin, a fake death, nobody every attending college, marrying the prince of Monaco, and that's just a few...), but I was far enough in by that stage that I just wanted to finish what I had started. The last season seemed to have no build up to a finale, as if they only found out they were going to be cancelled at the last minute.
Another show which I caught on to late was
Criminal Minds. I think I spent a few months last year catching up from season one - I just recently watched through the current season as well. One of my favourites was an episode with Brian Baumgartner (Kevin from The Office) as the guest criminal. His character was obsessed with Greek mythology, in particular
the fates and Atropos who cuts the lifeline. This was quite coincidental for me as I'd just finished reading Stephen King's Insomnia which is based around the same theme.
I had another
on-call weekend from the 9th to the 11th, and for the first time ever I didn't have a single call to attend to - easy money! Having to spend a quiet weekend at (or close to) home meant I was finally able to make a start on my
winter holiday planning - which sounds fun but is actually very, very exhausting due to the amount of organising I like to do. So far South Korea and Taiwan are looking good for a few days each, but I still need to add another destination or two (and soon).
I also spent a lot of time doing a long overdue house cleanup on the weekend, which was motivated by a free
donation cleanup coming the following week - their solution is to dump all your good reusable items in your dirty recycling bins, the day after normal recycling for a special pick up. I was pleased, and surprised, with how much stuff I was able to extract (mostly from my room) to be donated:
- Backpacks
- Blankets
- CD (and cassette!) stereo system
- Clothes
- CRT television
- Desktop computer (has been sitting on the floor for months!)
- Music CDs
- Nokia mobile phone
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| A small photo of the big cleanup. |
In preparing to donate my desktop computer I thought I should first wipe the hard drives properly. I found a free program to boot into DOS to wipe all the drives, but the first drive I chose accidentally was the USB drive - it took two hours to wipe a simple 8GB USB drive before I realised my mistake!
While preparing to say an emotional goodbye to my old computer I stopped in at the local MSY for a couple of small purchases:
- DVD drive
- USB 3.0 flash drive - I can't believe I've been using super slow 2.0 until now, what an idiot
Having the new DVD drive installed I also started the long process of copying stuff off all of my old CDs and DVDs - mostly movies. I'd better make sure I don't have anything really important on CD in particular still, as some of these CDs hadn't aged very well and either couldn't be read or could be read, but only after bringing my computer to a standstill for several minutes.
Of course, the next week I loaded the recycling bin according to instructions...and they didn't turn up. I had to call them up to come back again and do their job. The bigger items had to be dropped off in person at a recycling plant in Box Hill South - the TV and stereo system. I was a bit surprised when I went there that they didn't even seem to care about keeping the pieces together. One guy picked up the stereo, another guy the TV and speakers, then the other guy came back for the remotes for each. No idea if they intend to actually use these working items or just junk them, but I'm glad I didn't take my computer along too, I still need to find somewhere to donate or sell it.
The next weekend I was considering attending my second AFL match of the season - Melbourne vs. Richmond at the MCG. Those last minute plans were aborted when I found out that buses were replacing trains between Box Hill and Richmond - trying to get a bus home after the football would have been a disaster.
After a week break there was another race on the next Sunday morning - the
VRR 5/10/half at Westerfolds Park. I chose to do the 10km while Jason did the 5km - usually we just do the same distance. As usual with these smaller races the stupid kids got in the way at the start - I almost tripped over a girl who inadvertently slowed down after just a few hundred metres. I was in fourth place after the madness at the start, but I could tell the guy in first place (and also doing the 10km) was too fit and athletic for me to compete with. After a couple of kilometres I moved into third just behind Jason and we actually were staying close behind first place - more surprisingly a young girl almost caught up from behind, but she couldn't maintain the speed for long. After about 4km there is a big hill to complete the race circuit, since Jason was only doing one lap he was able to push ahead and actually moved into first place overall - me and the other guy had to take it a bit easier with another 5km to go still. The second lap I managed to catch the leader after 6km, but I could tell he wasn't running flat out so he pulled away again afterwards and probably finished 30 seconds clear at the finish. There was no one nearby so I eased into a second place finish with about
38:25 for 10km, not a bad time.
In the afternoon I attempted to do some more house improvements like the previous weekend. I got another lightning flash USB 3.0 flash drive, new shower holder and a new warm quilt since it's starting to get extra cold at night. It all sounded so simple except:
- MSY has terrible customer service - one guy serving customers and he kept stopping to take phone orders
- Half the people in line behind me gave up and left, one guy even started abusing the staff
- The tile gaps in the shower meant the shower holder suction cups wouldn't attach properly
- I eventually jammed it into one corner, but certainly not the way it was designed to work
- I purchased a King size quilt instead of Queen size, I tried to see if it would fit anyway, but no luck
So infuriating and frustrating...I also tried out some weird new flavours of Kirk's soft drinks with mixed results:
- Fruita - sort of pineapple flavour
- Kole Beer - sort of line brown creamy soda, maybe...
- Sno Drop - hard to describe
The next week I tried to do a hard running session on Tuesday only to come down with a really bad calf injury, more than just a simple calf strain, so I couldn't do any more exercise for the rest of the week. I might not have had time anyway, as the final weeks of a project at work have been pretty stressful, I haven't ended up getting out of my seat and outside for a lunch break until after 1pm most days.
I made another visit to the
Nike Factory out at Bundoora and some good timing meant we arrived just as they had a special 50% off the shoes on the back wall. I bought another two pairs of running shoes, meaning I now have a total of five pairs of brand new running shoes - in other words, I have almost as many shoes as injuries.
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| New shoes in the front row. |
Sunday was a second VRR race in a row, this one a special event at Albert Park - the
Angela Taylor memorial fun run. Since we had not pre-registered we turned up at 7:40 to sign up for the 8:30 race - probably about 45 minutes earlier than necessary. The only good thing was that I had registered and was back in the (relative) warmth of the car just as a rain shower passed through.
The rain went away and it was back out for a quick warmup before the race. I spotted one guy who looked like a proper athlete as well as one young girl with insanely muscular legs - but other than that there didn't seem to be as many quick runners as last year. From the start this was proven correct, I was just ahead of Jason and in about fifth place, at the turn around point after 2km I found out that a couple in front were also doing the 5km rather than the 10km (according to their bib colours and numbers). My speed for the first lap wasn't so great, only just under 4:00/km but probably slowed down a bit by the wind. After the first lap my theory was correct, only one guy and one girl stayed out on the track for the second lap of the course. I tried to catch the guy in front, but couldn't really make any ground, and Jason fell away just a little after 7km so I again was second for men and third overall, with a time of
38:15 for 10km. The winner was an under 20 girl with an amazing time of 36:36.
We had to wait around for about half an hour for presentations, only to find out only first place gets a medal - what a waste of time! If they didn't give medals for the 5km walk as well, plus a medal for about twenty different categories like nippers, juniors, open, senior and veteran in both men and women then maybe they would have a few more for second and third place instead...
On Sunday afternoon I finally did make it to another
AFL game, this time
Carlton vs. Adelaide. I only decided to go at the last minute so missed about the first ten minutes of the opening quarter. The first half wasn't really very exciting, only four goals to Carlton and two to Adelaide. Thankfully there was a bit more action in the third quarter, as Carlton moved ahead by about 20 points then gave up all of the that lead by the end of the quarter again. The fourth played out much the same, I thought Carlton had the match won when they went up by 15 points with only a few minutes left so I exited to make it to the station in time for the train. Listening to the end on the radio Carlton almost lost the match actually, only saved by a dropped mark in the Adelaide forward line in the last seconds of the game.
I bought a couple of tickets for the
2015 Asian Cup - the advanced sale opened at Tuesday 12:00pm, so of course at 11:59am I had not one but two people come up to me at work and engage in conversations about work stuff. I just purchased the cheap tickets for the only quarter final in Melbourne anyway, which should have either Australia or South Korea participating in it - hopefully Australia if they can beat South Korea to top their qualifying group (possible but unlikely).
Speaking of tickets, I also went to see
Godzilla on cheap Tuesday. I had pretty high hopes given the trailers I had seen, but was very much let down by the actual movie:
- Bryan Cranston was only in the first half hour
- After Bryan Cranston departed, it was clear it was going to be another standard "Transformers" movie
- i.e. The stupid kid and his family are conveniently front and centre of every scene of the movie, as well as becoming the ultimate hero and saviour
- Godzilla was pretty crap
- 4 out of 10
After much agonizing over dates and countries I think I have
finally reach an outline for my
winter holiday - from Wednesday August 6 to Saturday or Sunday August 23 or 24. The next steps are to get my leave approved (currently I have
only five days of annual leave or so, but should be up to about ten by the end of August so I shouldn't have to dip into negative too much), then make the airline and hotel bookings, then apply for a tourist visa to China! It's quite annoying that I left my old work with about 15 weeks of holiday leave backed up and now I keep dipping into the negatives. Probably it won't be until mid 2015 that I have built up a bit of advance leave - if I'm lucky...
And finally a quick video games update. I have not played anything at all on the Xbox, and I've just spent a few hours playing the
FIFA 14 Ultimate Team free game on my mobile - which is either funny or sad. The squad manager part of the game is quite fun and addictive, but I don't really enjoy the matches you have to play - or the lack of money you make from playing those games. The controls of the players are quite awkward and often they end up running and/or passing in the wrong directions.
