(no subject)
It will never cease to boggle me that humans can - using only their muscles - launch themselves in the air high enough and for long enough to rotate three or even four times. That's just nuts, man. ...okay, so figure skating is about the most accessible Olympic sport for non-sports people like me, really, but STILL. Pretteh. *watches* *may or may not be hoping madly we get the coverate of the Pirates guy that tenar was talking about because I am just that shallow*
Also, way to go, flist. I leave my computer for less than 48 hours and you all get all super talkative again like you have not done in, oh, weeks! *still not caught up!*
Also, wow, how screwed up is it that I hear (autumn, I think?) of Vivaldi's Four Seasons and my instant association is WITH A BANK. Frickin' advertising.
At least there are many shiny happy pictures of shiny happy flistians on the road to this catchup. Whoo.
Okay, so two random-enough-to-be-noteworthy dreams over the last few days.
In the field of 'When You've Been Watching Men With Brooms Too Often and/or Thinking About Paul Gross/The Winter Olympics Too Much: the first, which was last night, and I don't remember much of it. I was in a curling team, I think others of you lot were there, and then the curling? INCITED THE APOCALYPSE. It was all very Buffy. Except, in a very Canadian way. Very weird. I woke up going "wtf, brain?" and there was other stuff probably related to the fact I'm fathoms deep in Mirror Dance and I did not want to wake up this morning, but I forced myself up at about 10 anyway. I know, woe, my life is pain and suffering.
In the field of 'When It's Been Too Damn Long Since Cleveland And You Miss Everyone Including the Ones Who Weren't There': the second, which was about four days ago and I keep forgetting to mention. It's got fuzzy now, but a whole bunch of us were together (as we are wont to do) and going to a U2 show (again, similar) and Joy was definitely there, and Lissie and Shannon and Court and I'm almost certain Charlie and Laura, and Barb and NotDrey, too, so it was kind of mostly cleveland but with a smooshing of others too. And we were all out scoping out the venue, but for some reason after we'd been lining up there for a while we didn't need to be there anymore and we were totally cool with that (possibly my dream elided the actual show and it was afterwards? Not sure) and, anyway, we were wandering round the place where it was, which was kind of some sort of small town (possibly in the mountains?) and we knew that U2 had done a photo shoot in this little cafe/restaurant place (not unlike where we had brunch in Chicago in March) and we were all joking around about it - as if we'd seen the pictures already, somehow, and someone said "wouldn't it be funny if they were still there?" and we all thought that was hilarious, but for some reason I had to go down there and, like, my dad was there briefly, so he and I went in, and I looked up and saw the Edge. And some guy taking photos of him, and Edge was being all gracious and letting him do what he wanted and I was all 'o_O must not be a bother!!' and then looked up properly and saw Adam, like, right in front of me. And I distinctly had the thought "I will kick myself if I don't say something now even more than I will kick myself if I say something boneheaded" so I scraped up my courage and blurted out something about "thankyouyou'reawesome" and he was really sweet and talked to me for a bit, and we were giggling about something, and then I was all feeling like eek and he had to go and then he just sparkled at me and held up his hand and I gave Adam Clayton a high five. Which was apparently, you would think from his expression and the way he poinged out the door, about the most exciting thing that had happened to him all day and obviously for me too! And then I turned around and it did that misty dream thing and a little bit of time had passed and I was walking over to the table where everyone was sitting down to have lunch, and I dropped into the chair opposite Ally, looked up and went to try and tell her about it, and I was making total eyecontact with her, but all I could do was sit there and giggle. Like, I kept opening my mouth and all I could do was giggle like Paul Grossa schoolgirl. Actually, and I observed this to myself in the dream, too, it sounded exactly like Courtney's giggle when you asked her about being onstage playing "Out of Control" the week afterwards. Which, I think, is totally my favourite giggle of anyone's ever. It was cool. And then I was thinking to myself "self, stop giggling! you have to tell them about it! Adam! HEE HEE HEE" and then I eventually woke up.
Wow, this snowboarding business is brutal. But slightly fascinating, in that trainwreck kinda way.
Oh, and, so, yesterday:
I realise Eleanor Roosevelt would kick my ass for this, but, yeah, I came out feeling really out of my depth and d-u-m dumb, because of course if you give me a general knowledge quiz I will INSTANTLY forget everything I know ever, especially about sport. (Hey, Chris, I finally remember - Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindell. Sigh.) Or history. Or, um, grammar. I mean, seriously, I usually feel that, aside from a few particular known bugbears which I generally just take a "ah, the hell with it" approach to (or, you know, fix when people smack me and point them out) I am not bad at grammar related things and in fact edging towards 'good' and certainly better than the majority of the population (unavoidable side-effect of having taken a foreign language in school - they have to teach you the english equivalent to be able to teach the foreign grammar - people who avoid languages don't get ANY english grammar these days here) but... fuck, give me a nitty-gritty test on it and I start second guessing myself into the heebie jeebies and freaking out. I think as well it's because normally, if I'm not sure, I'll look it up and I'm good at looking shit up, which means my memory is under the impression it's allowed to suck sometimes. Heh. So, uh, yeah, I'm kind of like "I'm not smart enough to do this job" on the inside and also figuring that it's going to be more a case of "being less suckful than the other applicants" than "being better than the other applicants" so we'll see, I guess?
Which is no reflection at all on the job, just that I am omg insecure when it comes to brainyness issues and I feel like what little intelligence I had had vanished since I finished school? Possibly since I finished high school? Heh. My dad did inadvertently do me a favour this afternoon, though, as he found an old school photo, showed my half-brother (who is still visiting from Germany with his girlfriend, did I mention this?) and told them that I'd got a scholarship. I actually forget that sometimes. Admittedly, not a fabulous scholarship (and I'm still bitter because I know I was at least better than a girl who had a slightly larger schol. but her mother was on the trust board etc etc and hello, they didn't even NEED a scholarship /ugly) but still, a scholarship. To one of the top school in the country. /skite So, um, yeah, I wasn't always dumb?
HOCKEY!! *gleeful flail* YAYE OLYMPICS. Man, the Russians are caning the Swiss.
Okay, I gotta fess up to start. We fucked up. We actually thought we'd lost, and while I was kinda upset about that I figured we sort of deserved to lose, but it turned out we actually won. Because we couldn't hear the announcer properly at the end, and so we left before the game was, um, actually over. SUX0R. Normally mum and I wouldn't have left anyway, because we are great proponents of the "let the other idiots play sheep first, we'll leave when they kick us out and meander without getting crushed" theory, but the Germans were patently bored and obviously wanted to get going, Bronwyn was looking like she wanted to get home too, and the people behind us ALL got up and left through the emergency door, so we figured, okay, we can get out fast and easy this way, score. Or not. So we'd walked most of the way back to Chris' house (in quite a large crowd, too, so at least we weren't the only losers) when we heard another huge roar from the stadium, and this went on for a while. It was obvious we were missing something, so mum and I both got a wee bit "gorammit" but, you know, politely. Found out from the paper this morning that we hadn't actually lost - we'd drawn - and so they'd had a bowl-off to decide the winner (first 20/20 bowl-off ever! And I missed it. *over it now, I swear!!*) and that was what we'd been hearing. In the end, we won that 3-0, so, yay, and all, just a pity we messed up.
Anyway, the game was great fun. We left my car and mum's car (that she and the other three had driven there in) at Chris' place because she's walking distance to Eden Park, and I'd spent a nice productive afternoon watching S2 of due South with Chris (I was very discreet and only shrieked a little bit at the beginning of 'The Witness' in anticipation of the Milk Duds Incident) so we walked over, found our seats, which while a little bit too high to be fabulous actually had the best sight-angle onto the pitch that I've ever had, so yay. Oh, and I was totally wearing my Croke shirt (is this obnoxious? I'm still tossing up whether or not it is, considering so many people missed out on tickets) and this guy walking behind us on the way to the cricket asked me about the shirt and we had a nice chat and he's going to both shows, GA, so, hee, yeah. (He was pretty! And way too young and also male, to be honest, but... pretty! My mum thought he was fit which I thought was hilarious.) We also had an aisle which was awesome (because mum and I both lean to the claustro/agora-phobic type of thing these days) and the five seats behind us never got taken at all, so we spread ourselves out, which was lovely because the seats in the South stand are TINY and OLD and made for MIDGETS.
The terraces were in fine form as is so often the case, there was some poor bugger dressed up in a full on Winnie the Pooh suit (really. They must have been boiling) and we saw quite a lot of people get arrested (sadly, nothing has yet equalled the sheer hilarity of a whole stand full of people watching a guy get arrested, eyeballing him and the cops, then shaking their fists and chanting in unison "you fucked up! you fucked up!" seriously, it was like: see entire rest of stadium either hurriedly cover their children's ears and/or nearly wet themselves. (No prizes guessing what Gemma and I did, hee.))
There were also FOUR streakers (three male, one female, though the girl kept her underwear on) over the course of the evening which is fucking unprecedented, especially since it's now an instant $5000 fine or something similar, plus, I would expect, a trespass order from the stadium. Of course, that got the crowd going like crazy, as it often does (and which is why they're trying so hard to discourage the pitch invasions, because it's a case of trying to make the consequences - that is, other than getting tackled by the huge security guys, and man, that girl went over painfully hard, it was quite worrying, actually, cos they did NOT need to be that rough - worse than the kudos of having several tens of thousands of people laughing at you.) Are streakers such a big thing at sporting events overseas? Or is this just, like, an Antipodean thing, these days?
The game was fun, or at least I felt it was, not quite as many boundaries as you'd hope for from a 20/20 (ie, way shorter than usual) match, though they still outscored that dismal score of that 50 over game that Izzy went to with me (which was still awesome fun, or at least, was to me.) It was Chris Cairn's last international game ever, which was, well, frankly I think more of the bloody season ticket holders from the ASB stand could've had the decency to show up, but, yeah, it's very much the end of an era. I'm glad I was there, for that reason, and I'm even more glad we won, for that same reason. I was hoping he'd manage to go out by leaving a ball on the stadium roof, like his father before him (and as he'd done when on-form in the past) but I think he was out on either two or three runs - he only got singles before being caught out. Which is probably a small blessing, at least, because I know that man and he's usually either absolutely stunning or out on a duck (insert WW joke here). And it would've sucked to have him out on a duck in his last game.
My mind is apparently a useful thing now, and I'm quite pleased with it in the one respect - it seems to now automatically keep track of both runs scored and balls/overs, which is great, because I didn't get at all lost. Go brain, good for something!
Few notes mostly, I fear, about the music between overs/after boundaries were scored:
Between 13th and 14th overs, Could you be loved and I'm looking around for Mark Geary.
Between 15th and 16th overs, Counting the beat and where's Izzy?
There was this fucking sweet run-out that we got early on in the game that was just a thing. of. beauty. Thrown by Cairns, too, he was on top fielding form, caught another guy out later, too. And there was this absolute plum of a shot thrown from right out on the boundary line - couldn't see who it was, but he scooped up the ball just as it was about to hit the line and be a 4 and got it back to the wickets and nailed the stumps. From the fucking boundary. It was awesome. I mean, sadly for us the batsman was already safe anyway, but it was a beautiful shot.
One of the West Indian guys came out on the pitch to Buffalo Soldier which made me think of your young man. Then when we were batting, Fleming smashed a four and they played Hungry Like the Wolf which my brain apparently associates with Julie.
At some point near the beginning when the Windies were still batting I went on a mission to get food which, as usual, got way too complicated and made me miss TWO wickets. Sigh. Mostly because I got to the food window and found out they were cash only, walked around as directed to get money out on eftpos, found that the stadium, not being dumb to the opportunity, had a tent set up and were charging $2 per transaction (!! bastards!) for cashout rather than just having an eftpos machine and then the lady in the tent as I got there stood up and yelled "sorry guys, I've run out of money, they might bring more but right now there's nothing" which, okay, I can nearly forgive them blatantly highway robbery-ising everyone with the fee, but running out of cash for people in, like, the FOURTH OVER (ie, the first half hour) when most people in NZ work on eftpos now? Really poor planning. So then I walked back up to our seats, managed to just barely catch seeing that really sweet runout I mentioned, borrowed cash off mum and went back. I have remembered why it is we usually buy one tub of chips, finish that, and THEN go back for another, because sweet Jesu, trying to carry three tubs of chips and a hotdog all at once? Ow and eek. I was very lucky to not end up wearing the lot. I did end up positively layered in tomato sauce but, eh, that's a normal sideeffect of stadium-chips. Mmmm, Eden Park chips. Stupid overly expensive artery-hardening cups of goodness. (Izzy's right there with me, right?)
Another four, and it's Annie Lennox, "sweet dreams are made of these" and I'm wondering why Charlie's cell is ringing... ahh, Pavlovian response.
I think it was Lou Vincent who smashed a six and then a four immediately thereafter, garnering from the sound system (you guessed it) can't touch this. I carried out my usual pavlovian response to this song (become giggling wreck) and carried on. Cairns came out to bat to Working Class Man and I maybe a little bit cried.
...they played fucking I will follow right near the end. Which just about fucking destroyed me, because I'd been having Croke flashes all day, even before putting on the shirt, and I kept half-hearing Wake Up echoing into my ears multiple times throughout the evening, and then they go and play that song which I heard for the first (and I think last?) time ever at Croke Park and I was just a mess.
And then the last over and by that stage we were sorta mostly kinda a little bit totally losing, which bit, and we were chasing 127 and had 119 on the board, which was just way too close for comfort given we'd had 8 wickets out already (we started out awesome but had the most amazingly bad mid-game slump) and then it got down to three balls, requiring 8 runs... and a single... two balls, requiring 7, most of the stadium on their feet and screaming stamping cheering, a six and a single, or two fours, come on come on you can do it come ON and we got a double, nearly a four but they got it inches from the boundary, and it was down to one. ball. remaining. And we needed a six. And I was suddenly realising with bone-deep certainty just why we're still so fucked off with Greg Chapell**, not that I didn't before, but wow that brought it home again, and it was deafening and they bowled and somehow, miraculously... we got a four.
And I'd thought they'd scored 127, so we'd lost, and so we left, but it turned out I'm stupid and they had of course only scored 126 as well, so there was the bowl-off that we missed. And yeah. But it was totally fun and omgcricketLOVE and I need to go to at least one more one-dayer at some point. Though I doubt any game can ever match the sheer idiot joy and cinematic wonder that was the Hamilton game this time last year. Seriously, that game... you could not have scripted a more perfect game, and coming on the heels of no sleep and "I just bought my first U2 ticket oh my god I'm going to see U2" that was pretty much up there as one of the Best Days Ever.
**Short lesson in Aussie/Kiwi relations. There was a, uh, small (to play it fast and loose with the word 'small') incident twenty five years ago where the Aussies BLATANTLY CHEATED so that we could not possibly score a six off the last ball which would have won the game - the batsman facing it was not great and there was pretty much no chance of him hitting the six, but they cheated anyway and killed the possibility. Greg Chapell was the bowler who bowled the infamous (and after that point illegal) 'underarm bowl' and we have never ever let the Aussies forget about it. Lesson of the story: if you're foreign, we will find something to hold over you forever. Though at least, unlike what we have on the French, no one died.
I think I'm done. I have to go to bed because I'm working at 8 in town the next two days in a row, AND going out tomorrow night (eek, I have to be social? I suck at that!) and yeah.
*wants to stay up and read fanfic and flist and drink caffeinated beverages SIGH MY LIFE IS PAIN AND SUFFERING.*
Also, way to go, flist. I leave my computer for less than 48 hours and you all get all super talkative again like you have not done in, oh, weeks! *still not caught up!*
Also, wow, how screwed up is it that I hear (autumn, I think?) of Vivaldi's Four Seasons and my instant association is WITH A BANK. Frickin' advertising.
At least there are many shiny happy pictures of shiny happy flistians on the road to this catchup. Whoo.
Okay, so two random-enough-to-be-noteworthy dreams over the last few days.
In the field of 'When You've Been Watching Men With Brooms Too Often and/or Thinking About Paul Gross/The Winter Olympics Too Much: the first, which was last night, and I don't remember much of it. I was in a curling team, I think others of you lot were there, and then the curling? INCITED THE APOCALYPSE. It was all very Buffy. Except, in a very Canadian way. Very weird. I woke up going "wtf, brain?" and there was other stuff probably related to the fact I'm fathoms deep in Mirror Dance and I did not want to wake up this morning, but I forced myself up at about 10 anyway. I know, woe, my life is pain and suffering.
In the field of 'When It's Been Too Damn Long Since Cleveland And You Miss Everyone Including the Ones Who Weren't There': the second, which was about four days ago and I keep forgetting to mention. It's got fuzzy now, but a whole bunch of us were together (as we are wont to do) and going to a U2 show (again, similar) and Joy was definitely there, and Lissie and Shannon and Court and I'm almost certain Charlie and Laura, and Barb and NotDrey, too, so it was kind of mostly cleveland but with a smooshing of others too. And we were all out scoping out the venue, but for some reason after we'd been lining up there for a while we didn't need to be there anymore and we were totally cool with that (possibly my dream elided the actual show and it was afterwards? Not sure) and, anyway, we were wandering round the place where it was, which was kind of some sort of small town (possibly in the mountains?) and we knew that U2 had done a photo shoot in this little cafe/restaurant place (not unlike where we had brunch in Chicago in March) and we were all joking around about it - as if we'd seen the pictures already, somehow, and someone said "wouldn't it be funny if they were still there?" and we all thought that was hilarious, but for some reason I had to go down there and, like, my dad was there briefly, so he and I went in, and I looked up and saw the Edge. And some guy taking photos of him, and Edge was being all gracious and letting him do what he wanted and I was all 'o_O must not be a bother!!' and then looked up properly and saw Adam, like, right in front of me. And I distinctly had the thought "I will kick myself if I don't say something now even more than I will kick myself if I say something boneheaded" so I scraped up my courage and blurted out something about "thankyouyou'reawesome" and he was really sweet and talked to me for a bit, and we were giggling about something, and then I was all feeling like eek and he had to go and then he just sparkled at me and held up his hand and I gave Adam Clayton a high five. Which was apparently, you would think from his expression and the way he poinged out the door, about the most exciting thing that had happened to him all day and obviously for me too! And then I turned around and it did that misty dream thing and a little bit of time had passed and I was walking over to the table where everyone was sitting down to have lunch, and I dropped into the chair opposite Ally, looked up and went to try and tell her about it, and I was making total eyecontact with her, but all I could do was sit there and giggle. Like, I kept opening my mouth and all I could do was giggle like Paul Grossa schoolgirl. Actually, and I observed this to myself in the dream, too, it sounded exactly like Courtney's giggle when you asked her about being onstage playing "Out of Control" the week afterwards. Which, I think, is totally my favourite giggle of anyone's ever. It was cool. And then I was thinking to myself "self, stop giggling! you have to tell them about it! Adam! HEE HEE HEE" and then I eventually woke up.
Wow, this snowboarding business is brutal. But slightly fascinating, in that trainwreck kinda way.
Oh, and, so, yesterday:
I realise Eleanor Roosevelt would kick my ass for this, but, yeah, I came out feeling really out of my depth and d-u-m dumb, because of course if you give me a general knowledge quiz I will INSTANTLY forget everything I know ever, especially about sport. (Hey, Chris, I finally remember - Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindell. Sigh.) Or history. Or, um, grammar. I mean, seriously, I usually feel that, aside from a few particular known bugbears which I generally just take a "ah, the hell with it" approach to (or, you know, fix when people smack me and point them out) I am not bad at grammar related things and in fact edging towards 'good' and certainly better than the majority of the population (unavoidable side-effect of having taken a foreign language in school - they have to teach you the english equivalent to be able to teach the foreign grammar - people who avoid languages don't get ANY english grammar these days here) but... fuck, give me a nitty-gritty test on it and I start second guessing myself into the heebie jeebies and freaking out. I think as well it's because normally, if I'm not sure, I'll look it up and I'm good at looking shit up, which means my memory is under the impression it's allowed to suck sometimes. Heh. So, uh, yeah, I'm kind of like "I'm not smart enough to do this job" on the inside and also figuring that it's going to be more a case of "being less suckful than the other applicants" than "being better than the other applicants" so we'll see, I guess?
Which is no reflection at all on the job, just that I am omg insecure when it comes to brainyness issues and I feel like what little intelligence I had had vanished since I finished school? Possibly since I finished high school? Heh. My dad did inadvertently do me a favour this afternoon, though, as he found an old school photo, showed my half-brother (who is still visiting from Germany with his girlfriend, did I mention this?) and told them that I'd got a scholarship. I actually forget that sometimes. Admittedly, not a fabulous scholarship (and I'm still bitter because I know I was at least better than a girl who had a slightly larger schol. but her mother was on the trust board etc etc and hello, they didn't even NEED a scholarship /ugly) but still, a scholarship. To one of the top school in the country. /skite So, um, yeah, I wasn't always dumb?
HOCKEY!! *gleeful flail* YAYE OLYMPICS. Man, the Russians are caning the Swiss.
Okay, I gotta fess up to start. We fucked up. We actually thought we'd lost, and while I was kinda upset about that I figured we sort of deserved to lose, but it turned out we actually won. Because we couldn't hear the announcer properly at the end, and so we left before the game was, um, actually over. SUX0R. Normally mum and I wouldn't have left anyway, because we are great proponents of the "let the other idiots play sheep first, we'll leave when they kick us out and meander without getting crushed" theory, but the Germans were patently bored and obviously wanted to get going, Bronwyn was looking like she wanted to get home too, and the people behind us ALL got up and left through the emergency door, so we figured, okay, we can get out fast and easy this way, score. Or not. So we'd walked most of the way back to Chris' house (in quite a large crowd, too, so at least we weren't the only losers) when we heard another huge roar from the stadium, and this went on for a while. It was obvious we were missing something, so mum and I both got a wee bit "gorammit" but, you know, politely. Found out from the paper this morning that we hadn't actually lost - we'd drawn - and so they'd had a bowl-off to decide the winner (first 20/20 bowl-off ever! And I missed it. *over it now, I swear!!*) and that was what we'd been hearing. In the end, we won that 3-0, so, yay, and all, just a pity we messed up.
Anyway, the game was great fun. We left my car and mum's car (that she and the other three had driven there in) at Chris' place because she's walking distance to Eden Park, and I'd spent a nice productive afternoon watching S2 of due South with Chris (I was very discreet and only shrieked a little bit at the beginning of 'The Witness' in anticipation of the Milk Duds Incident) so we walked over, found our seats, which while a little bit too high to be fabulous actually had the best sight-angle onto the pitch that I've ever had, so yay. Oh, and I was totally wearing my Croke shirt (is this obnoxious? I'm still tossing up whether or not it is, considering so many people missed out on tickets) and this guy walking behind us on the way to the cricket asked me about the shirt and we had a nice chat and he's going to both shows, GA, so, hee, yeah. (He was pretty! And way too young and also male, to be honest, but... pretty! My mum thought he was fit which I thought was hilarious.) We also had an aisle which was awesome (because mum and I both lean to the claustro/agora-phobic type of thing these days) and the five seats behind us never got taken at all, so we spread ourselves out, which was lovely because the seats in the South stand are TINY and OLD and made for MIDGETS.
The terraces were in fine form as is so often the case, there was some poor bugger dressed up in a full on Winnie the Pooh suit (really. They must have been boiling) and we saw quite a lot of people get arrested (sadly, nothing has yet equalled the sheer hilarity of a whole stand full of people watching a guy get arrested, eyeballing him and the cops, then shaking their fists and chanting in unison "you fucked up! you fucked up!" seriously, it was like: see entire rest of stadium either hurriedly cover their children's ears and/or nearly wet themselves. (No prizes guessing what Gemma and I did, hee.))
There were also FOUR streakers (three male, one female, though the girl kept her underwear on) over the course of the evening which is fucking unprecedented, especially since it's now an instant $5000 fine or something similar, plus, I would expect, a trespass order from the stadium. Of course, that got the crowd going like crazy, as it often does (and which is why they're trying so hard to discourage the pitch invasions, because it's a case of trying to make the consequences - that is, other than getting tackled by the huge security guys, and man, that girl went over painfully hard, it was quite worrying, actually, cos they did NOT need to be that rough - worse than the kudos of having several tens of thousands of people laughing at you.) Are streakers such a big thing at sporting events overseas? Or is this just, like, an Antipodean thing, these days?
The game was fun, or at least I felt it was, not quite as many boundaries as you'd hope for from a 20/20 (ie, way shorter than usual) match, though they still outscored that dismal score of that 50 over game that Izzy went to with me (which was still awesome fun, or at least, was to me.) It was Chris Cairn's last international game ever, which was, well, frankly I think more of the bloody season ticket holders from the ASB stand could've had the decency to show up, but, yeah, it's very much the end of an era. I'm glad I was there, for that reason, and I'm even more glad we won, for that same reason. I was hoping he'd manage to go out by leaving a ball on the stadium roof, like his father before him (and as he'd done when on-form in the past) but I think he was out on either two or three runs - he only got singles before being caught out. Which is probably a small blessing, at least, because I know that man and he's usually either absolutely stunning or out on a duck (insert WW joke here). And it would've sucked to have him out on a duck in his last game.
My mind is apparently a useful thing now, and I'm quite pleased with it in the one respect - it seems to now automatically keep track of both runs scored and balls/overs, which is great, because I didn't get at all lost. Go brain, good for something!
Few notes mostly, I fear, about the music between overs/after boundaries were scored:
Between 13th and 14th overs, Could you be loved and I'm looking around for Mark Geary.
Between 15th and 16th overs, Counting the beat and where's Izzy?
There was this fucking sweet run-out that we got early on in the game that was just a thing. of. beauty. Thrown by Cairns, too, he was on top fielding form, caught another guy out later, too. And there was this absolute plum of a shot thrown from right out on the boundary line - couldn't see who it was, but he scooped up the ball just as it was about to hit the line and be a 4 and got it back to the wickets and nailed the stumps. From the fucking boundary. It was awesome. I mean, sadly for us the batsman was already safe anyway, but it was a beautiful shot.
One of the West Indian guys came out on the pitch to Buffalo Soldier which made me think of your young man. Then when we were batting, Fleming smashed a four and they played Hungry Like the Wolf which my brain apparently associates with Julie.
At some point near the beginning when the Windies were still batting I went on a mission to get food which, as usual, got way too complicated and made me miss TWO wickets. Sigh. Mostly because I got to the food window and found out they were cash only, walked around as directed to get money out on eftpos, found that the stadium, not being dumb to the opportunity, had a tent set up and were charging $2 per transaction (!! bastards!) for cashout rather than just having an eftpos machine and then the lady in the tent as I got there stood up and yelled "sorry guys, I've run out of money, they might bring more but right now there's nothing" which, okay, I can nearly forgive them blatantly highway robbery-ising everyone with the fee, but running out of cash for people in, like, the FOURTH OVER (ie, the first half hour) when most people in NZ work on eftpos now? Really poor planning. So then I walked back up to our seats, managed to just barely catch seeing that really sweet runout I mentioned, borrowed cash off mum and went back. I have remembered why it is we usually buy one tub of chips, finish that, and THEN go back for another, because sweet Jesu, trying to carry three tubs of chips and a hotdog all at once? Ow and eek. I was very lucky to not end up wearing the lot. I did end up positively layered in tomato sauce but, eh, that's a normal sideeffect of stadium-chips. Mmmm, Eden Park chips. Stupid overly expensive artery-hardening cups of goodness. (Izzy's right there with me, right?)
Another four, and it's Annie Lennox, "sweet dreams are made of these" and I'm wondering why Charlie's cell is ringing... ahh, Pavlovian response.
I think it was Lou Vincent who smashed a six and then a four immediately thereafter, garnering from the sound system (you guessed it) can't touch this. I carried out my usual pavlovian response to this song (become giggling wreck) and carried on. Cairns came out to bat to Working Class Man and I maybe a little bit cried.
...they played fucking I will follow right near the end. Which just about fucking destroyed me, because I'd been having Croke flashes all day, even before putting on the shirt, and I kept half-hearing Wake Up echoing into my ears multiple times throughout the evening, and then they go and play that song which I heard for the first (and I think last?) time ever at Croke Park and I was just a mess.
And then the last over and by that stage we were sorta mostly kinda a little bit totally losing, which bit, and we were chasing 127 and had 119 on the board, which was just way too close for comfort given we'd had 8 wickets out already (we started out awesome but had the most amazingly bad mid-game slump) and then it got down to three balls, requiring 8 runs... and a single... two balls, requiring 7, most of the stadium on their feet and screaming stamping cheering, a six and a single, or two fours, come on come on you can do it come ON and we got a double, nearly a four but they got it inches from the boundary, and it was down to one. ball. remaining. And we needed a six. And I was suddenly realising with bone-deep certainty just why we're still so fucked off with Greg Chapell**, not that I didn't before, but wow that brought it home again, and it was deafening and they bowled and somehow, miraculously... we got a four.
And I'd thought they'd scored 127, so we'd lost, and so we left, but it turned out I'm stupid and they had of course only scored 126 as well, so there was the bowl-off that we missed. And yeah. But it was totally fun and omgcricketLOVE and I need to go to at least one more one-dayer at some point. Though I doubt any game can ever match the sheer idiot joy and cinematic wonder that was the Hamilton game this time last year. Seriously, that game... you could not have scripted a more perfect game, and coming on the heels of no sleep and "I just bought my first U2 ticket oh my god I'm going to see U2" that was pretty much up there as one of the Best Days Ever.
**Short lesson in Aussie/Kiwi relations. There was a, uh, small (to play it fast and loose with the word 'small') incident twenty five years ago where the Aussies BLATANTLY CHEATED so that we could not possibly score a six off the last ball which would have won the game - the batsman facing it was not great and there was pretty much no chance of him hitting the six, but they cheated anyway and killed the possibility. Greg Chapell was the bowler who bowled the infamous (and after that point illegal) 'underarm bowl' and we have never ever let the Aussies forget about it. Lesson of the story: if you're foreign, we will find something to hold over you forever. Though at least, unlike what we have on the French, no one died.
I think I'm done. I have to go to bed because I'm working at 8 in town the next two days in a row, AND going out tomorrow night (eek, I have to be social? I suck at that!) and yeah.
*wants to stay up and read fanfic and flist and drink caffeinated beverages SIGH MY LIFE IS PAIN AND SUFFERING.*