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First things first. We lost Cricket again on Saturday. It really wasn’t even a close game. But the important thing is that I hit the ball!

I’ve been blooded now, they’d better watch out. I’ve taken to standing right in front of my wickets, because I was sick of being bowled. I realised that there was a risk of me being given out LBW if the bowler manged to hit my legs, but I figured it was worth the risk. This week I managed to actually hit a ball though, and quite solidly. I smacked it into the ground rather than the air, and if I hadn’t hit it directly to the fielder at Silly Mid On I reckon it would have travelled a reasonable distance. I hope he hurt his hand, the bastard.

Unfortunately the next ball hit me right on the shins, and I was dismissed LBW. I didn’t feel so bad about it though - I haven’t been out that way before so it was just one more item to check of my list.

Louise, Jo and Georgie turned up after we’d started fielding, with picnic hampers aplenty. They were quite suprised when the game finished, as they thought we hadn’t been in to bat yet. They should know better by now - at least this time they made it to the game before it ended.

Christmas was pretty quiet this year. With the wedding only a few weeks away most of our attention and all of our money was concentrated on that rather than on Christmas. Still, we had a nice family lunch and still managed to stuff ourselves silly.

On boxing day I like to go and see a movie, as there’s always at least one big movie released then. This year it was the first episode in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I love the books, and had always feared that a movie adaption could never live up to the epic scale of the story, or capture the incredibly imaginative characters and landscapes. After all, there are no budget or technology restrictions in your own imagination.

However I was extremely impressed with the movie. A few things had been changed, and a few left out - but none of them to the detriment of the story. I’m a bit more forgiving than many people in that respect I think, but as an adaption I thought it was excellent, and very true to the book. The effects were amazing, and suspension of disbelief was easy. I thoroughly recommend it, but don’t take a drink in - it’s very nearly three hours long, and by the end I was seriously worried I was doing myself an injury by trying to keep my bladder under control.

Well, that’s about everything caught up I think. Next we go down to White Beach with Paul and Jo to stay at their shack over the New Year. I imagine that Fun Will Be Had.

Many of my friends, family and acquaintences keep asking me how I’m going at cricket these days. I think a lot of them are suprised to hear that I’m still playing. Looking at my diary today I noticed that I had written anything about my cricket adventures since late October, so I figured that it was time for an update.

The Sandy Bay Swallows have made a pretty ordinary start to their cricket career, but we’re improving all the time. It’s been an eye-opener for me to see that teamwork is actually required in team sports, given my previous misconceptions and almost complete lack of experience in the area.

I’ve made a lot of progress, by my standards. I’ve fielded in several different positions, and I know where I’m supposed to be going next when we change ends or get a left handed batsman, without having to have someone shout out directions like they’re trying to park a bus across the street via voice-activated remote control. I know enough of the rules and can read enough of the umpire’s signals to be able to do the scoring, which I now do regularly. My batting has improved tremendously, although going from zero to anything always seems like a pretty big gain.

Of course, I’m yet to score a run.

All this practice and experience doesn’t change the fact that I’m almost entirely without skill and coordination. In fact, I think I’m setting some sort of a record. We play every week, and I’ve been out for a duck (meaning I scored no runs) in every game in which I’ve faced a ball. Most of those have been golden ducks, meaning I was out on my first ball. Two weeks I managed to finish not out, because the batsman leaving the field had been dismissed on the last ball of the over, and the other batsman was dismissed before I faced a ball.

I’ve discovered that there’s nothing quite as frustrating as putting on a suit of armour (which I can at least walk in reasonably steadily now), waiting for your turn to bat, walking 40 metres out to the pitch, and getting bowled on your first ball. Nothing that is, except repeating the experience week after week.

If it wasn’t for the fielding, I wouldn’t be getting any exercise at all.

Despite all of this, I am somehow enjoying myself. There’s the social aspect of it all - the main reason the team was started, after all. There’s also the fact that I seem to be hurting less, and for a shorter period after each weeks game - I feel as though the exercise may actually be having an effect. I also feel that, regardless of my lack of success, I’m making progress in my ability to actually play the game.

It helps that we’ve lost every game we’ve played since the first, so I don’t feel like I’m holding the team back all on my own.

This week will be interesting though - we’re playing our only defeated foe, St. Johns. And they’ve won every game since we played last. There’ll be a lot of tension on Saturday, and we’ll put everything we have into turning our losing streak around, no doubt.

I’ll let you all know how it goes.

I haven’t written an update in a while, and I started getting hassled about it by the only person who reads my diary, so I thought I’d throw in a quick update.

I do have a longer entry in the works, so consider this a stocking filler.

I’ve been very busy with work lately. We’re developing a product which we want to start rolling out in January, and given that I’m on holiday/honeymoon during the second half of January and we have Christmas and New Year in the middle, there’s a lot to be done in a short space of time.

On Friday, my workmates and I had our Christmas "function". Given that there are only four of us, we decided that we could do whatever we wanted and so we spnt the morning playing mini-golf (at Putters) and bowling, followed by a bbq in the afternoon with our partners and the guys from another little company at the technopark (as well as their partners). Fun was had. Tim won everything in our morning session - the mini-golf was closely contested, but at the bowling alley he pulled out his own bowling ball and showed us who was boss. It’s always the quiet ones..

In other news, I managed to forget both my Mother and Brother-in-law’s birthdays. Well, not entirely.. I remembered them on the evening of Sam’s birthday (sorry Sam) and forgot about them again until my Mum rang up during the afternoon of her birthday the next day. I’m pretty sure she had me on speaker phone with the rest of the family gathered around while she waited to see if I remembered - thanks Mum .

Here’s a tip for all you guys out there. Next time you’re idly musing to yourself that it might make sense to swap two rooms around, keep the conversation securely inside your head until you’re ready to follow through. Otherwise you may find (for example) that your fiancee has run off and starting draggng furniture around before you can catch your breath, and that your weekend is going to be occupied by moving furniture. Just a thought.

Have you ever noticed that almost every product you can buy today has a phone number on it for you to ring and offer comments and suggestions? I used to wonder what sort of person would ring up to comment on their Snickers Bar or frozen dinner, and now I know.

It’s me.

Friday evening in the supermarket Louise and I were walking through the aisle with all the chips in it when I decided to try and get a tin of Cheese Pringles. I haven’t been able to find them anywhere for ages, and I had a craving. There were no cheese pringles to be seen, and I decided I’d just had enough. I grabbed one of the other flavours, turned the tin around and found their phone number.

I must have looked pretty stupid standing there in the supermarket with the mobile phone to my ear and a tin of pringles in the other hand. I’ve never been one to let that sort of thing stop me though. After a couple of rings I got through to their answering machine.

“Err, hi. This is John from Tasmania. I’ve been looking everywhere for cheese flavoured Pringles, but they seem to have disappeared. What’s up with that? Please call me and let me know.”

Well, it turns out that they actually check their messages, and don’t just delete them (which is what I expected). I got a call on my mobile this afternoon from a girl working for the company that makes Pringles, and she told me that they’d stopped making Cheezums (as they were apparently called) to make room for other flavours. She said that she missed the cheese flavour as well, and had passed my message on to their marketing people.

It suddenly struck me - if companies are listening to their messages, there are all sorts of implications. Firstly, if I can get enough people to ring up and ask for Cheese Pringles, we might get them back. Secondly, marketing departments are (at least in part) basing their decisions on the opinions of a bunch of freaks who care enough about trivial things like chip flavours to ring them up. Finally, there must be a bunch of companies making weird or stupid products who could do with some advice, and I might just be the sad git to give it to them.

On the first point, I can take action now. If you’d like to see Cheese Pringles (Cheezums) back on the shelves, then call Proctor and Gamble on 1800 028 280 and let them know.

On the other points, I’ll have to get back to you..