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I’m so tired of being sick. Funnily enough, it’s being tired that’s making me sick, as well as the sickness making me tired. What a bloody fantastic cycle!

Really though, I’m sick and tired of being ill. My ears are better than what they were a couple of months ago but the internal infection’s still there; in addition to this, it’s a cold winter and my fatigue just makes me more prone to catching viruses - which, in turn, makes me fatigued.

Things are low for me at the moment. Life seems to have taken its toll on a lot of us and right now, so many things are crashing at the same time, I can’t seem to keep it all afloat. Being sick certainly doesn’t help either. I’m trying to stay kicking and fighting… but it gets hard.

We came 2nd.

It truly sucks too because we only lost the finals by one measly goal scored against us in the last 2 minutes by the “Brisbane Womens Association” team. I’m sorry, maybe I’m being a sore loser but that name sounds absolutely ridiculous. Especially in a tournament where everyone else are high school teams and they’re a rep team. The only consolation I really have is that we managed to hold them out for almost the entire game, and there actually was a chance for us to win. A chance we didn’t manage to seize, but nonetheless, it wasn’t as if we were absolutely wasted 5-0 like we did to some other teams.

I managed to get a fluked goal in our game against Lourdes Hill as well, with a reverse sweep, thanks to their defender being completely caught off-guard when I ran in to tackle her while she was receiving the ball for a “back and around”. I’d only intended to hassle her and put pressure on her, but somehow actually managed to get the ball off her and found myself going one-on-one with the goalie.

There were so many conflicts on tour and I really can’t be bothered to delve into them again; but I must say that the non-hockey-related highlight was going to the Hard Rock Cafe at Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast as part of our post-tournament relaxations.

With parents gone for three weeks, school and all that it entails - music, production, hockey, etc etc etc, the list goes on… - plus all the domestics such as “uh oh… forgot to defrost something for dinner” or “oh crap, uniform hasn’t washed and dried itself” has left me with no one to be online. Plus, in three hours time I will be tumbling out of bed and heading for the airport for a week away at the Southern Skies Tournament in Brisbane, Australia for hockey. We’re then spending two day/nights at the Gold Coast after the tournament, and hopefully it’ll be fun. All I’ve got my fingers crossed for at the moment is that my ear infections don’t give me severe headaches on the plane. Gaaaah.

May post more if I get hold of a net cafe.

Our Senior Jazz Combo at school consists of me (bass), Liz (trumpet), Colin (tenor sax), Crag (piano) and Euan (drums); we originally had a guitarist, but he’s gradually dropped out, either because of lack of interest or laziness. Or both. Point is, we decided to busk on the band rotunda in the middle of Howick’s main street as part of our band practise for a paid gig we’ve been booked for on Friday 27th at a rotary club. We drifted in at about 8.30am for half an hour’s warm up, and somehow, miraculously, we made over three hundred dollars between 9am-12pm. It ended up being $64 or approx. $21/hr each, which honestly isn’t bad for a band practise.

Thanks to that though, we’ve now been booked to play for: another rotary club, a 1st xi soccer game (which we probably won’t end up doing), the restaurant across the street from the band rotunda… and possibly more, I wouldn’t be surprised if our dear HOD forgot to mention it; after all, I had barely stepped into the music department for two seconds last Wednesday before he bombarded me with:
“Where on earth have you been?!”
(me) “Uhh… what do you mean… where have I been?”
“Production orchestra band practise! You haven’t been to ANY!”
“What production?!”
“The Sound of Music of course!” (it’s the school musical this year, it’s on next week, might I mention).
“But sir, I’m not in the production band this year?”
“Yes you are!”
“You never told me.”
“Well I’m telling you now! Here, come get the music…” and with that he headed into the office, rummaged around and shoved a tatty booklet of music under my nose.

I immediately tried to explain to him - continuously, for three days - that I couldn’t do it (1/ because I’d like a life this year; 2/ I have waaay too much stuff on at school - I’m spending up to 12hrs at school, 6.45am-6.45pm & 3/ it’s bound to clash with something) but to no avail. So now I’m stuck with spending my next two weekends as well as my already extremely-long weekdays at school. Argh. Not to mention, I had to spin around in circles asking four other people until I finally found someone to cover me on the night of the 27th, since dear Sir is completely ignorant and says that production takes priority over our gig.

It’s so easy to sit here on the couch, with my laptop on my lap, half watching/listening to tv in the background, mobile phone next to me, the kitchen (and the junk food it entails) just a couple of metres around the corner. That’s how I’ve spent the past twelve hours apart from sleeping (right here on the couch) and watching the Roland Garros Women’s Finals. I’ve been trying to upgrade my mum’s site from WP 2.5 to 2.5.1 but it’s been such a pain that I just re-installed WP altogether (she had no content on it anyway).

Thankfully the All Blacks defeated Ireland, 21-11 last night in Wellington. It was a must-win game, so now we all finally have a rugby match to talk about, since the entire embarrassing World Cup fiasco last year. I didn’t actually watch it LIVE though, I saw half of the replay a couple of hours after the game, since I was at a friend’s house watching movies. We watched The Brothers Grimm, in which I thought Heath Ledger’s role was very Jack Sparrow-like… kind of insane, out of it, loopy… And yikes, I’m so incoherent right now, I had so much to say before I started blogging, none of which I actually ended up saying.