We went to CPW Rage last night. Having finally made it to the depths of Tuggeranong (after a lap of Woden) we found ourselves in the ’standing room only’ area at the back of Erindale PCYC (Police Community Youth Center).
Shane ‘Angel’ Walsh opened the event, exchanging slaps with ‘Enigma’. I know a lot of wrestling is very carfully engineered to avoid hurting anyone, but there is no way to make a slap in the face loudly audible to 300 people without some pain.
The final fight was a three way ladder match, featuring crowd favourite ‘Crofty the Kambah Klepto’, who made it up the ladders to the belt first after dropping ‘Rex’ (or maybe ‘Warlock’?) through his own table of death.
The highlight of the evening may have been seeing Helmut, Shane’s supervisor having himself what appeared to be an excellent time watching his student do something quite unrelated to dwarf ellipticals…
Having played a paltry 5 or so games of dodgeball to date, someone appears to have felt sorry for us and gave us a ‘consolation grand final’ to play yesterday.
We certainly rose to the occasion, though got off to a bit of a slow start. By the final quarter we had the game wrapped up with three consecutive ’sixes’ and a finale score of 25-9.
Our prize was a jug of ’something’, though we presumed this excluded the top shelf. In light of the night before this was probably a good thing anyway. We got it filled with coke…
We also got real prizes. We are now the proud owners of a Hahn beer glass (which came with a free refill…) and a school bag.
After my dodgeball injury I thought I should take it easy for a day. It hasn’t been sunny enough to take it easy in my hammock, so I’ve watched cricket and baked banana cake instead. There’s nothing special about this particular recipe, but the results are rather tasty.
Banana cake
200g butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
4 or so old bananas
3 cups self raising flour
some milk
Pre-heat oven to 160ish. Melt the butter a bit in the microwave and mix well with the sugar, then mix in the eggs. Mash the bananas in another bowl and then mix into butter mixture. Mix flour in gradually, adding milk to keep un-dough like if necessary. Pour out into greased baking tins and bake for about about half an hour, or until done.
Unfortunately (for the team) the Josh Blackman Experience feat Bad Man Jose couldn’t pull together for a win this week. I felt a certain sense of deja vu as we lined up to play the same team as last week. We did fare rather better than our previous effort, but still trailed 33-25 at the end of the fourth…
Unfortunately (for me, and the team one might argue) I damaged my leg with the first throw of the day, and spent the rest of the game limping like a lame duck. Pat and I think there’s something unnatural about trying to throw something the size of a netball as if it were a cricket ball, particularly sidearm.
On the advice of my physio I’ve definitely hurt myself in some way, but how exactly we’re not sure…that’s what you get for calling your brother in a different country and expecting him to figure diagnose the problem by phone.
I have succesfully made my first ever batch of marmalade! It did have to be boiled up twice, with extra lemons added the second time to give it some solidity (thanks Jo). Sunny did ask something like ‘what the hell is that?’ as I was spreading it on my bread with peanut butter, and I must admit it isn’t the best looking stuff ever. It seems to have gone all cloudy, partly due to the extra lemons, which were put in the blender.
But never mind, the taste is excellent, the key may be soaking the fruit in water overnight first before boiling it up. Aparrently this gives it the slightly bitter taste, which is lovely. Next time I’ll look into getting seville oranges or something, rather than the month old ones that were going to be chucked out if I didn’t cook them. I’ve put Jo’s recipe, which I used, below:
Seville marmalade
3 seville oranges = 3.5 lb
1.5 pint water (900ml)
2 lb sugar (500g)
half pint lemon juice (300ml)
Cut oranges in half and take out pips (soak pips in 1/2 pint water).
Slice oranges and put in 1 pint water and soak for 24 hours (this gives it the bitter taste).
The next day take sliced oranges in their water with lemon juice and water strained from the pips and boil in pressure cooker for 15 minutes. Then take lid off pressure cooker and add sugar. Boil till set (ie. if you take some out and leave it on a spoon it should set).
so this is the new look. shamelessly based on the style files included with the blog code.
is it cooler than the old style black site?
what a game! i’ve never seen the movie, and don’t know the history or the game if it has one, but there is a thriving league here. “The Joshua Blackman Experience feat Bad Man Jose” of which i am part have played two games. one loss, one win. Perhaps today we suffered the loss of both Mr Blackman and the Bad Man himself, as we had only five players (of a possible six) for three quarters. We were bolstered by ‘Craig’ in the fourth, but unfortunately it was to no avail, as we lost something like 48 to 20.
the excitement for $6 is quite a bargain, and the view from the bar isn’t to be sneezed at either. bring on the next game…
next day edit: ouch. there’s a whole bunch of new muscles involved in this game. i guess that’s what you might expect when you spend half an hour trying to throw something like a netball as if it were a tennis ball.
i can now say i have the ultimate cooking utensil! i can’t remember the official name of it, but it’s incredible. it’s like the old rubber spatula one uses for cleaning out jars and stuff, but double ended and more streamlined. it’s also heatproof enough to use on a frying pan and stuff. it’s the way of the future…
is it summer yet? i think it must be getting close. with the official start of spring over month ago, and my having used sunscreen twice in the last three days, indications are that the weather is improving markedly. we have also recently seen the back of the tri-nations, afl and league grand finals, (we’ve also seen the ashes, but no matter).
i did a little research into the matter by laying on coogee beach for a decent part of saturday afternoon to confirm my suspicions. i also regretted my decision not to wear jandals and shorts as i walked around darling harbour and the chinese gardens with laurie and jo on sunday. so in conclusion, roll on summer and beaches and frisbee!
