Monday Mishmash

Stimulating?

Back to Nuova Lazio High for another stimulating and enjoyable week at the chalkface.  At the moment, it doesn't look like any more teachers are off, so I won't have to get any more relievers to cover the classes.

I know (well, I'm pretty sure) there's some meeting on tonight after school (but finishing before 5:30pm to comply with our union's directives) but for the life of me I cannot remember what it is.
HOF meeting?
Whole School meeting?
Inquiry group meeting? (no idea either.  Suggestions to : We've Got To Have Some Sort Of Professional Learning Groups But We Have No Real Idea Of What To Do Committee)

I'm not too bothered, and I'm pretty sure it's not early onset Alzheimer's, or a senior moment, just early onset Apathy

Never mind, I'll find out this morning.

We went to the Dominion Post Government House Concert yesterday.  As mentioned previously, the outdoor event was moved into the Michael Fowler Center, out of the rain, and as I predicted, the picnic lunch was rather mundane.  A brown paper carrier bag containing:
An apple
A plastic box of tuna pasta salad (quite tasty actually, just needed a little more seasoning)
A bread roll with butter
A piece of ginger icing covered shortbread
A very short plastic fork
A plastic wineglass.

NOTE: No bloody napkins/serviettes

We also had the choice of red or white wine (Montanna, generic "North Island" Cabernet Sauvingnon ) beer, juice, sparkling wine or water.  The were quite generous really, they gave us 2 bottles, each of 187ml, so that's a ½bottle each.

¾ of a bottle of Montana's Red Vino later

After finishing the lunch and the 2 bottles of vino (plus another bottle from our birthday guest) I settled down (in quite a pleasant but vaguely detached frame of mind) to enjoy the concert. It was good.
The orchestra played Elgar's Nimrod as an unannounced prelude (in memoriam of the earthquake-struck of Canterbury)This has always been one of my favourites, and it was performed superbly.  My only criticism was the lack of leg shown by the lady cellists, lady double bassists, and lady violinists.  Never mind the concert went on.

Cannon #26 being made in Bazza's Shed

The best bit of the evening was during the final piece, the 1812. The original plan was to have some real cannons firing during the closing bars (I say real, because that was what the concert notes said. But seeing as we are in New Zealand, the land of the bodge job, the land of Number 8 wire, the land of the "Bloke's Shed", then it would probably have been lengths of cast-iron gutter downpipe strapped (with Number 8 wire) to a Pack-n-Save shopping trolley, and packed with 5 grams of black powder) but because we were inside, and due to some namby-panby safety regulation which precluded the firing of ordnance inside a public building, the cannon fire would be replaced by a guy thumping a large bass drum.

Everything went as planned, we were all enjoying the music and just as the percussionist hit the bass drum at the start of the second sequence of "bangs" he lost his grip on the drum-thumping thing (sort of a large padded mallet) which rebounded from the drum at great speed and went whistling across the percussion section, narrowly missing the young guy on the tubular bells.  The funniest thing was the look on the drummer's face.A mix of shock (this cannot be happening) and boyish glee (Wow, that was fun, can I do it again?).  He quickly retrieved the drum-thumping thing and carried on, but I'm sure that everyone that was there (and I looked for Ffflur, but couldn't see her) will remember that poor drummer and the rebounding drum-thumping thing.  Ahh.  The magic of a live performance.

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I see there's a new film on release.

I must go and see it.
It's seemingly about a slick-talking cold blooded reptile who takes over an entire community.
The beast can change it's colours to suit it's environment, and rarely tells the truth.
It has a very thick skin, which makes it insensitive to all criticism and shows little regard for others.
It's boorish and rude, and intrudes into everyone's business.
It's:

In one of our reader's comments recently, the question was raised as to the suitability and/or the readability of the colours used in this blog.
I am quite happy to change if the majority of our readers wish to do so.
There should be a voting thingy on the right. Unless I've stuffed it up again.
Remember the real and original name for this blog?
How the Hell Does This Work?