Term 2 2018

This term mostly seemed to revolve around playing badminton! My Wellington Masters team had a practice match against the Hutt Valley on the 6th May, before heading to Rotorua for our first ties of the season the following weekend. We had a great weekend with comfortable wins against the Eastland and Waitakere teams. My wonderful parents continued their amazing support of me and my sport by coming to watch the games all day on Saturday. Dad does proudly wear his Waikato rugby cap every time he comes to watch me play, maybe I need to buy him one in Wellington colours to wear just while he's at badminton... This year we tried a change of motel from the one we usually stay in during trips to Rotorua. We stayed at the Sport of Kings and it was absolutely fabulous. It is definitely going to be our new 'regular'. The owners were brilliant and couldn't do enough for us, but best of all is a huge outdoor heated pool. It is (slightly) cooler than a normal spa pool, making it the perfect temperature to stay in for a long period of time. After our matches we were in there for about 2 and a half hours, listening to some sounds (my waterproof phone and speaker was very handy poolside), soothing our tired bodies, and having a few drinks to toast the start of a successful rep badminton season. We could probably have stayed in the pool longer if we didn't have to head into town to meet up with all the other teams for dinner. Every team in our division was in Rotorua that weekend, so it was lovely catching up with some familiar faces. I think Ged, Jason and Stephen need to stick to their day jobs, I don't see much in the way of modelling contracts in their futures...

Will and I try to do fairly regular date nights on Wednesday nights, and the one on the 23rd May was a cracker! We started off with dinner at Dockside, on the waterfront. They often have 5-course tasting menus with wine matching which come up half-price on the voucher sites. We've done several of them now, and they are always fantastic.

 

Once we had wined and dined, we headed out to explore the LUX light festival. This is an annual event in Wellington, and a highlight of our year.

  

 

 

The Cube exhibition below was our favourite. It blasted out 80s music and put on a disco light show. We stayed and watched it for ages. Unfortunately blogger seems to be having bit of a problem with its video extensions at the moment, so if you are viewing this using Chrome there will probably be a blank space where the videos are...

 

There was lots happening at the kid's playground as well. The video clip of Will coming down the slide in a rather ungainly manner brings a smile to myself every time!

 

Queen's Birthday weekend ended up being far more exciting than expected! A couple of weeks beforehand I had a message from the manager of the Southland badminton team, asking if there was any chance I would be able to play for Southland in the South Island Division 1 competition in Timaru over the long weekend. They were short of a women able to play at that level, and had put an SOS call out to all of the South Island associations. A friend of mine who plays for Otago knows that I'm usually up for (pretty much!) anything, and put him on to me. That saw me flying down to Christchurch on Friday 1st June, where I was met at the airport by another Southland player who now lives in Christchurch. When I asked how I would recognise this guy, I was told to look out for a 6 foot 5 red-headed guy who answers to the name of 'Stretch'. Needless to say, James (to give him his proper name) had no problem recognising me with my huge big badminton bag, and we had a nice chat on the drive to Timaru. 

 

The badminton was awesome, and the Southland lot were a great bunch. The goal was for the team to stay up in Division 1, and we won enough matches for that to happen which was good. Southland kindly paid for my motel accommodation for the three nights, as well as the big final dinner which teams from all three divisions of the competition attend. Due to the distances involved with travel, the South Island do all their representative matches over the one long weekend, whereas in the North Island we have 4 weekends of matches throughout the season. The final dinner was a laugh, Southland are very much a party team, and they bought along a whole stack of table tennis balls, resulting in one giant game of beer pong. It was very much a case of old people behaving badly!

I arrived home on Monday night, and luckily had a teacher-only day on the Tuesday, so got an extra bit of recovery time. Playing 5 ties in 3 days was tough on the body! The following weekend I was back playing for my Wellington team where we accounted for Counties and Waikato in Waikanae, which was a venue I had never played in before. I can't say I'm a fan of multi-purpose halls and all their lines... We get a bit spoilt playing at a dedicated badminton facility in Wellington. Spot my 'baddy husband' below! Ged is new to the team this year and didn't have any Wellington shirts, so borrowed my spare one throughout the season.

 

Still on the badminton theme, on the 23rd June we attended my mixed doubles partner Stephen's 50th birthday party at his house in Eastbourne. The theme was classic rock, so I fully embraced an 80's look!

Here is my rock star hubby...

It was a great night with lots of fun and hilarity. The advantage of Stephen not actually owning much furniture meant that his lounge doubled as an excellent dance floor!

 

 

Yes, we are a close team...

 

We all chipped in and bought Stephen a brewing experience where he can brew his own batch of craft beer at a professional brewery. Mac used her design skills to take care of the label, which will go on his beer once it is bottled.

So, another term of school done and dusted. I am very much enjoying being part-time this year. I still have to go in every day, but on some days there are later starts or earlier finishes which helps. Having one less class also helps a bit with the whole work/life balance thing, which, considering this whole post is about life, and not work, I must be doing OK at!