Tigy’s Blog

What does it take to get a 4 year old to stress out and loose it? One baby alive and 4 AA batteries.

Our little angel has earned herself a huge prize, something that turned out to be $100 worth of pure stress. We agreed on the prize early on and I tried to talk her out of it when I found out the actual cost, but gosh darn it, she was focussed on getting this damn doll.

What did she do? Without giving away all the gory details she finally started going wees on the toilet, something we have been working on for 2 years now, yes thats right 2 very long years…

In our excitement we promised her a baby alive, something she had been asking for, if she filled a "star chart" with 1 star being awarded for each tinkle. Lesson here is always check the price of something before you agree to it, never assume you know what it costs.

Well our little miss stubborn, who wouldn’t even enter the room containing the toilet a mere week before hand was up there peeing up to 6 times a day or more. When she got upset nothing would come out we told her she had to drink something first, so she would grab a glass, knock it back and run to the toilet and wait for something to happen. Explaining it too time for the body to process the drink meant she would sometimes go away only to check back on the toilet every 5 minutes to see if it was ready… God bless her she tried so hard.

So after 22 confirmed tinkles and one final attempt to talk her into something ‘better’ (i.e. cheaper) we bought her the baby alive.

What is it I hear you ask? Have you seen the Stephen King movie Carrie, and perhaps are also familiar with Chuckie? We’ll if you answered yes to both of those you have a vague idea. This thing is a little girl stress machine.

As I speak Beth is fast asleep, absolutely exhausted from the few hours of work of looking after the worlds most demanding baby! Read the rest of this entry »

Wahey! I ordered a brand spanking new computer today, finally replacing old faithful after about 5 years or so of loyal service.

Its a Dell E520 and is a big upgrade from what I currently have, very excited and really bummed that its going to take about 2 weeks for it to arrive. Oh well never mind.

Old faithful is going to the old folks home, that is mum & Chris’ place. I’ll give her an overhaul and then theyre all set and raring to go. If anyone wants an old, but good, monitor, keyboard and stuff let me know though as I’ve got some left over bits.

So this time things didnt go quite as planned. I’m bummed, pissed off, grumpy and sad. But I’ll get over it. I read something quite inspiring, and something I think sums up why we were finally able to win the cup in 1995

It is not a game for armchair admirals. It is not a game for a person who is not prepared to come back. It is not a game for the faint hearted. It is a game for those who are not scared of pitting themselves against the best that the world has to offer. It’s a game where winning is almost impossible, almost, but not impossible.

This time you didn’t win but certainly didn’t lose. You only lose when you don’t have the courage to return. Not winning is part of the learning process which leads you to success.

Sir Peter Blake… Letter to Luna Rosa after 2000 America’s Cup

You can read the full letter on Peter Lesters blog, something I’d recommend everyone do. Its a real insight into the mind of one of our greatest hero’s and something that can be applied to so much in life.

So we didn’t win this time. We were, without doubt, the best challenger. We had the best challenging boat and arguably the best challenging team. But those bastards over at ‘Adinghy’ were better. Their boat was probable an inch quicker overall and their teamwork was a little better on the day.

I dont blame the team, they gave it their all, they gave it 4 years of their lives. They’ll be feeling like crap and my heart goes out to them. I’m pissed off. I wish we had done better, and although I thought it was a waste of tax payers money at first, I want us to be back. Learn from this and give it another crack.

We didnt win, but we didnt lose.

No this time its not our little Willy I’m talking about (OK stop sniggering now, you know what I mean).

Corporal Willy Apiata of the NZSAS has just been awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in Afganistan in 2004. Its the first time a kiwi soldire has received the award since WWII and I think a fantastic, long overdue, recognition of the work the guys in the SAS do. One of the problems with the SAS is that because they are secretive by nature you never hear about what they do, nor should you in a lot of cases. But I agree with Clark (Helen that it) that the awarding of a VC is a little bit exceptional. Even though Cpl Apiata’s name and photo have been widely published it didnt feel right for me to put his photo here, so I blanked out his face. If you want to see him I’ll let the worlds media take that responsibility. Personally as he is an active member of the NZSAS I think his face should be kept secret, but thats just my opinion.

Reports are that Willy carried a wounded mate 70 meters under heavy enemy fire, saving the mans life. There were 3 other awards made to other soldires for the same operation, but details of those are kept secret.

I notice that he started out in the territorials back in 1989, he’s from the Waikato and Eastern BOP so I wonder if he was with the 6 Hauraki? If he was he would have joined when dad was CO which is a nice little connection.

Kia kaha Cpl Apiata.