Invaders from the north

Shirley and Tom (Joanne's mum and step-dad, in case you've forgotten) are down for the weekend. They're taking a month to drive around NZ a bit visiting friends and family and this weekend they're down in Chch. It's nice to have them down here again and Tom hasn't seen the house since we bought it, of course, so he's enjoyed seeing what we've done with it.

This week's been another busy one. As well as the usual bible study group on Tuesday and week two of Exploring Discipleship on Wednesday it's been a totally mental week work-wise. Very stressful and full-on. People seem appreciative of what I'm doing and getting done though, which is good, and I've been told on numerous occasions that they wouldn't have been able to do the analysis I've been doing before I got here, which is good too.

To update you on the weekend's sport, Joanne's netball didn't go so well - 51-16, I think. Ouch. It sounds like the team they played shouldn't be in their division. Football-wise, we had a bit of a battle today. We went 1-0 up but then a silly back-pass allowed them to equalise. Then a flukey deflection off a knee in the box that could have gone anywhere meant we were 2-1 down at half-time. We got one back but then conceded again immediately. We fought back and equalised again before I had a chance with about five minutes to go to win it (would have meant a second successive hatrick too!) but it just dipped the wrong side of the crossbar. Gutted. Still, we fought back twice, have been living on our luck a little bit in the past few weeks, and so have to be happy with a draw. It does mean we'll probably drop to second from first (on goal difference) though.

Tonight we'd been out for dinner, to a place called Coyote on The Strip in town. It's a really nice place, great food. I'd recommend it to anyone. It was somewhere we went for food when we first Chch back in March 2005 actually, and incidentally where I first heard any tunes by the John Butler Trio. Not important or significant information really, but a fact all the same.

After dinner Shirley, Tom and I headed back home to watch the Crusaders in the Super 14 semi-final while Joanne headed out to Ruth's hen-night. She said she was just going to show her face. The plan was to end the night with karaoke. I knew she'd be out a while ;)

It's weird to think I've been writing on here over a year now. I guess looking back at what was happening this time last year is one of the reasons I started with blog.