Voting with my fingers

I played my second live poker tournament on Tuesday night, this time at the Realm in Hataitai. My beginner's luck ran out as I lasted little more than an hour, only winning one hand. I didn't mind an early exit as I still found the experience a little scary. With my body completely uninked and unpierced, I felt a bit out of place there. After my swift elimination I popped over to Julie's. She still seemed on a high from her ten-day stint in that rest home but when she rang me today she'd definitely crashed down to earth.

Yesterday I went tramping at Butterfly Creek. I took some of the trampers in my car; I'm always nervous about driving to places I don't know with people I don't know. It was a good walk - nothing too strenuous -on a mostly sunny and (for Wellington) a remarkably calm day. Ten of us did the trip including Danielle and a young girl who must have had some sort of learning disability - she was with her father. I couldn't quite pick her age but I found out she was fifteen when we compared footwear and she said she was the same age as my boots. I'd add a photo or two but I've lost the ability to do that on Blogger. In fact I'm increasingly finding Blogger to be a pain in the butt and I'll soon be forced to vote with my feet (fingers?) probably by moving to Wordpress.

The British football season, which runs for nine months, started last night. There was an interesting article in the Guardian last week about the contrast between Olympics, which were conducted in such good spirits by and large, and football.

Belarus move down four places to 17th in my "best performing countries" league (see previous post) due to their cheating (fe)male shotputter. Belarus don't often make the news but they sure did last week. Valerie Adams claims a sixth gold for New Zealand who stay in third place. At the last depression group I said that Adams might still get the gold (just after she'd finished second) and Giuseppe looked at me as if I was stupid.

My brother and his fiancée arrive in New Zealand in just four weeks.