OK, I'm going to out myself in public. I went to a LAN party last weekend.  I guess it is a pretty nerdy thing to do, but my mate Randal who hosts these things is a good guy and they really are a lot of fun. There were only seven of us there, but you wouldn't want any more as it would be a bit hard fitting any more into Randals house. We all hook our computers up together and then play car racing games. It's a funny thing, but I just can't get into games like that at home, but when a bunch of friends are all competing against each other on the same track at the same time it is great fun. I actually won a race for the first time ever so I had a pretty good day!

Yay!!! I'm on holidays now and I have the two most important people in the world with me for one whole week! Emma and Brad are going to Queensland with Donna next week so we don't have a trip planned, but I'm sure we will find some cool stuff to do. Emma is going shopping tomorrow with Tegan and my money so she is already happy.

About twelve months ago I came home late one night to find the power off to my house but the neighbors had power and the street lights were on.  I checked the fuses (they were OK) before I noticed that someone had turned off the switches in the fuse box. I can only assume some evil person wanted to see if I was away by coming back the next day to see if the switches were still off. Last night the same thing happened (or so I thought). I came home late to no power, but this time the switches were still on. To cut a long story short, I had to wait for an Aurora guy to arrive and replace the main fuse bolted up under the eaves as it was so old it had crumbled away.

 The share market continues to bounce back and I've started to receive some dividends as well so the bank balance is looking a bit better. I've also discovered that Google can send me money electronically so that will save me $10 a pop. Speaking of Google, I've noticed that they are showing lots of graphical adds on Tasweb now. I don't get to choose the ads they show, so I assume I've moved up the pecking order a bit lately. 

What a crazy month it's been in the world of shares. The bottom dropped out of everything I was holding. I sold some taking small losses and held some others that had dropped so much that it wasn;t worth selling them. Things have recovered somewhat over the past two weeks, however I'm still well below where I would have been if I had just left the money in the bank. Still, it's a long term thing, so I'm not too fussed. 

Emma's netball team (the Aviators) finished up second on the ladder and were odds on to play Taroona in the grand final, but unfortunately Tegan tried to slice her finger off with a scalpel in the science room and the school theater production clashed with the semis meaning they were missing a few players  (including Emma) and they dipped out ending up in third place.

Brad's table tennis team are pushing into second place on their ladder with a few games to go. They were moved up a division after winning the trophy for first place last season so the competition is a bit hotter and they are all doing really well.

 Brad's tennis finished up a few weeks ago, but because he missed the first week he didn't receive the sheet that told him about the grand final and because it was raining that night he didn't turn up and missed out on the opportunity to play. He has improved heaps and I'm sure he will do well next term.

 I've been playing tennis myself lately and was amazed to find out that one of the girls I play with lives five doors up from me. Even more exciting is that she tests the beer at the Cascade Brewery!

I mentioned the school theater production earlier.  It was called "How the west was warped" and was a musical comedy Western spoof. It was an amazing performance. Very funny and the singing and music was great. Emma spent the whole week before the performance out of school practicing as she was playing the trumpet in the band. They then did two performances each day for a week. By the end of it she was exhausted and her lips were almost bleeding!

As far as the Google cheque is concerned, I paid their stupid $10 fee and cashed the cheque, but looked into having Google use EFT to transfer the money. That failed because the stupid Credit Union have the one common BSB and account number that all overseas transactions have to be paid into. You then use the payment reference to specify the real account number to have the money paid into. The trouble is that Google's web page doesn't allow you to enter a payment reference so I'm stuffed!!!!