Mark O’Meara: the blog

Finn has been really ratty for the last couple of days but we put it down to being two and being tired from back to back busy Christmas’ with families. However it has been joined by amazing amount of dribble and sure enough the first of his two year old teeth is coming through.

Normally he has taken new teeth in his stride but this one must really hurt because he is often unhappy and even knocking back favourites such as yoghurt and a bottle of milk. In the end he had to hold him and squirt some kiddie panadol down his throat just so he could sleep a bit.

Hopefully today will see him manage a little better. Between him, the heat and the dogs Nicky hasn’t slept much overnight so it is possible we might put our trip to Bean’s Farm off another day although I hope not. I figure if you are tired and grumpy you might as well do it in a nice setting.

Lesson for the day - you never know what you’ll get in overnight news.

I have packed up SingStar to take away with us but we figured if we were going to play against other people we should get some practice in on the new disc. This is probably no surprise to anyone else but I am always staggered by just how few notes I manage to hit in any given song. By comparison Nicky consistently scored really well although she still might balk at singing in front of other people.

We skipped across to the other discs but from the 80s disc we tried;

Brass in Pocket by The Pretenders
Uptown Girl by Billy Joel
Karma Carmeleon by Culture Club
Come on Eileen by Dexey’s Midnight Runners
Perfect by Fairground Attraction
I Want To Know What Love Is by Foreigner
Walking On Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves
Our House by Madness
Material Girl by Madonna
99 Red Balloons by Nena
Don’t You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds
Tainted Love by Soft Cell
Everybody Wants To Rule The World by Tears For Fears

And as you might guess from the songs here even with me singing poorly it was all good dumb fun.

Lesson for the day - boys just wanna have fun too.

It struck us that two Christmas Days and then a longish drive to camping on the farm in the space of three days was a wee bit daunting. So yesterday we decided to declare Tuesday and rest day and we will join in the farm festivities on Wednesday.

While it would have been nice to spend an extra day with people being social I think we need the rest otherwise we’ll just arrive all cross and no-one wants that.

Lesson for the day - when it comes to doing very little it pays to pace yourself.

Yesterday we all went off for the O’Meara Christmas which was a really good day all around. While the adults seemed to all enjoy it the real winners were Finn and Danny who really seem to get along really well together. They did kid things for hours and hours and that’s a Good Thing.

And Fee did a wonderful job of preparing masses of tasty tasty food. Even in my most deluded delusions I couldn’t manage what she did. Top all of this off with a bit of SingStar eighties style and there was nothing that could have gone better.

Lesson for the day - it’s pretty good when an over-hyped day like Christmas can be a treat.

I read Nicky’s entry and thought perhaps I could say something about my 2005 which ran to more than 68 words.

However the actual writing of said entry is proving harder than I thought.

Let’s start with the external events. Firstly I did nine weeks of school rounds and increasingly that meant actually teaching. I enjoyed much of my rounds and even what I didn’t actual enjoy I was challenged by and got some kind of satisfaction from. With only twelve months to go before I can work again the whole exercise is starting to feel worthwhile and that helps a lot.

In March Shannon came to visit us all and this was exciting all around. It all seemed terribly surreal up until the second she arrived and then it seemed like she’d been here all along. Of particular note was the extraordinary hospitality and welcome shown to Shannon by the farken ace folk. Even now it seems strange that she is on the other side of the planet again.

2005 is also the year that Nicky had the tumour removed from her head which was all pretty scary in it’s own way. While there was little serious risk to her there was still some and that was pretty sobering. Happily she bounced back from the operation really quickly and her life seems to be on a good track at the moment.

Internally there are still bits of my life that are not as I would have them. While this is not news I hope at times I am getting better about that not mattering to me. All the same I think it does me good to be around people so full-time study and nine weeks of teaching rounds in 2006 can only be good news.

Lesson for the day - it is easier to live a year that to same something profound or interesting about the same.

It’s the day before Christmas and all through the house everyone is moving even the white eMac mouse.

On account of a barking dog we didn’t sleep well and I have not started the day in the best mood. However both Nicky and Finn are busy and travelling well and busy which is a pretty good influence.

Despite my crappy mood tomorrow is Christmas and I have every reason to think the day will go well.

Lesson for the day - there are far worse things than a good Christmas.

Nicky managed to scare up the sixth season of West Wing on DVD on eBay. It is obviously the Chinese release but all the menus are in English and it’s top quality. What amazed me was that it is that this season is not yet showing as even soon on Amazon but all the same here we have it.

Given that it probably won’t be in shops or on television for six months to a year I consider this seventy-six dollars very well spent.

We couldn’t resist and watched the first episode which I have to say was crackingly good.

Lesson for the day there are less obvious rewards to having a clever girlfriend.

I don’t expect to lose weight with all the eating that is involved in Christmas and New Year celebrations but all the same it was nice to step onto the scales this morning and see that I weigh eighty kilograms even.

I will probably gain a couple before it goes down again but all the same my target of seventy-five seems possible and reasonable again.

Lesson for the day - sometimes numbers mean stuff to me.

I have just completed my first ever Suduko puzzle although I do readily confess that it was on the easier level of these things. The real trick was to avoid the temptation of getting the software to warn me whenever I got a number wrong.

The easy level is a little too easy so I got only a tiny sense of achievement. The question is whether the next level up will make my brain explode.

Lesson for the day - some have a numbers brain but I am one of the others.

I had decided that 2006 will be the year I don’t go in Raw Comedy. Partially it is because I have nothing funny to say this year but mostly it is that I have had nothing funny to say for the last couple of years.

When they sent me the email reminder I did have a second where I considered it but then it was followed by a long string of seconds made up of thinking otherwise.

Lesson for the day - unproductive habits are the tricky ones to break.