Cold and wet, together at last.

I washed a bunch of Manchester on the weekend, and towels and doonas too. Then the weather clouded up and frosted over and drizzled a bit. Now I have washing lines worth of material backed up. The dryer can do a double bed sheet, or a flannelette sheet, but can't quite manage a flannelette double bed sheet. Then, last night, I volunteered to wash the indoor cricket strip. Tonight I am on dryer duty because if I don't clear the backlog I'll be sleeping on the couch, again.

This means I can sit in front of my computer and wait for my internet connection to do the stuff I usually don't wait for it to do. And tonight I have a very special connection (currently disgorging data at 40 bytes per second) which can barely handle email attachments. I can feel my character building with every click of the reload button. (Is it the latest trend to have the word 'loading' on the front page of your web site, or is "Document: Done" just a lie?) Meanwhile, back at the 6x86L, I can do some housekeeping, play erratic Tetris, or rabbit on a bit in my blog entry until I get a transfer rate suitable for uploading. I can listen to my Cult TV Classics Volume 1 CD, eat Vegemite on crusty fresh bread from the bakery I found this afternoon which makes Vienna plait loaves and tell everyone about it in detail.

In round five of the Commonwealth Bank Trophy the Phoenix Powerpuff Girls were beaten by the Liz Ellis Swifts and tumbled from outright first to equal first (third on percentage behind the Swifts and the AAMI Thunderbirds). After moving upcourt to wing attack for the test series against South Africa, Natasha Chokljat returned to wing defence in an out of touch Phoenix midcourt. Sharelle McMahon at goal attack had to work at getting the ball into the circle from the midcourt only to come up against the Swifts' Australian defenders, Liz Ellis and Alison Broadbent. The world's best netballer was restricted to just 16 goals from 25 shots for the game, even after Chokljat was switched forward to wing attack in the second half (which Phoenix won 20-18). The Swifts' Australian goalers, Jane Altschwager and Cath Cox, had it all over the Phoenix defence and scored 51 goals from 68 opportunities (30% more than Phoenix) provided by the dominant Swift midcourt. Phoenix's 38 points were earned mostly from Kirsten Wheeler's (22 from 27) face saving performance.

On Sunday, instead of playing Jonathan's Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Dave, Fiona, Jimbo, Megan, Simon and I went to Jo's place for a replay of the Eurovision Song Contest. Outlandishly attired and with booze in hand we hurled vitriol and laughed derisively at the gaudy spectacle. Despite Jo's residence being recently feng shuied and able to seat everybody (twice), half the crowd couldn't reach the nibbles and the cheap brandy schnapps curdled the Bailey's Irish cream. Western decadence: one, ancient oriental geomancy: nil. Then we forewent the original plan of stopping every three songs to refill and before Terry Wogan could say "two butch walloppers" it was over. A scary lady from Turkey held aloft the trophy (which is so spiky it may not comply with European Union health and safety standards) having earned the land of earthquakes and World Cup Soccer semifinalists the right to host the contest next year. (Or should I say "contests"? Bwah ha ha!) Linda was awarded the Eurovisionophile Epitomist trophy for an unprecedented second time.

On Monday I was asked for some statistics on the current state of testing for the software release I am the Testing Manager of. At last the nature of these "statistics" which people have been telling me I should be keeping was revealed. Fortunately, maths is fun. I quickly generated a stack of paper as a distraction and set about pasting raw data into a spreadsheet and creating graphs of what was actually requested. Presently I have an array of spreadsheets with pie and stacked column graphs which I can update each morning and email to anyone who might express an interest. (Now, if only someone would express an interest. I think the stack of paper might actually be the standard presentation.)

Yesterday, Human Shields won an indoor cricket game after a run of five unsuccessful outings. Our opposition looked like they might overhaul our innings until their last pair got out four times in their first over and finished with negative thirty runs. As the game started at 5:30pm I had time to drive to the other end of Canberra and catch the second half of another dubious Pub Trivia Quiz with Greg, Jimbo, Jonathan and Trudi. Mallrats came tenth out of fifteen and Jonathan won a jug of beer, which was nice.

At this time Bigpond is shovelling data to me at 22 bytes per second, possibly by using actual shovels.  ¶ 21:43