Last day

Last day of work before our trip to Melbourne. This will no doubt be a slow day watching the clock. This time tomorrow I will be on the plane. Footy games we are attending are Carlton v Richmond, Collingwood v Hawthorn, Brisbane v Melbourne and Essendon v North Melbourne. My tips are blues, demons, kangaroos and I hope a pies victory. Although not at all confident with a few injuries to start the season and the hawks in good early form. Other highlights of our trip will be a trip to the Hofbrauhaus, St Kilda for a lions training session, numerous pub crawls and much more. One more day to go. With 7 blokes and no girls, things could get ugly

Melbourne

3 sleeps till epic Melbourne trip...that is all

Footy season

Ok after a long off-season, the AFL and local footy kicks of their seasons this weekend. The AFL in their wisdom have decided to rob us of all but one game for their opening weekend. GWS v the Swans. Hard to see the Giants doing anything but watch the Swans rack up a cricket score. For the local leagues, the mighty Yeronga Devils begin their season against Robina at home. It is past players day. So if you are like me and have played in the red and black of Yeronga, come on down and have a drink and watch the new generation run around. Cheer, cheers for the old red and black!

Not much

Little to talk about today. Bit of a slow week. Gearing up for a big weekend. Yeronga Football Club is having their past players day this Saturday. Since I am now a member of the past players. Im looking forward to having a beer with the older players, watching some footy, eating a couple footy ground style hot dogs and seeing 4 Yeronga Devil victories....oh yeah ill probably vote too.

The Walking Dead

Top TV show from creator Frank Darabont known for his work on Stephen King movies The Myst, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. This show was developed from a comic book series and resembles a TV version of the George A Romero Dawn of the Dead movies. The show basically follows a group of survivors who try to avoid the thousands of shuffling undead creatures that dominate the TV landscape. The show is like one big movie and has just concluded its second season. Good show if you are into the zombie genre. 3 and a half stars.

St Patrick's Day

March 17 is always a great day for me. Not only a great drinking day in the name of the irish. But my good mate Vossy's birthday. As tradition we head down to Dicey O'Reilly's Garden City and spend the day drinking and enjoying the atmosphere. However this was to be our last at this venue with Dicey's closing down next week. Cheers for the good times guys!

Kindle

Finally loaded up my new Kindle with some books. Pretty good read too. The back-lighting simulates the pages of a real book. I got the new touch one. It does have a few bugs in it however. The touchscreen is no way near as responsive as an apple or samsung smart phone. And very rarely it will jump ahead a couple of pages with one press. Despite these small bugs it simplifies the reading process and stops me carting around a whole bunch of books. The prices of the e-books are a lot cheaper and obviously a lot quicker delivery.

John Carter

Went and saw this in 3D yesterday. Was a good flick as long as you don't take it too seriously. Kind of a mix between Stargate, Avatar and Star Wars Attack of the Clones. The actor who played Carter is the long haired guy from the TV series Friday Night Lights. Entertaining with some great special effects and a fun story. I look forward to the inevitable sequels. 3 stars

Thirds training

My legs hurt

Tough night on the track last night, starting with a 1km time trial. My time was way down on previous years. Need to work on my fitness a little bit. Otherwise it was a fun session, some good drills followed by a water-logged scratch match. There will be some very good players at the club this year. Big John, Jasper, Jack and Jordy among the standouts last night. Skipper Voss was solid down back for the white team.

The night wasn't without incident however. I managed to crush my finger while turning on the shower afterwards. Those things are dangerous :)

Footy

Busy day today, so a short post.

Headed up to the Sunny Coast for the lions v blues NAB cup game on Saturday. The Lions easily beat a young blues team who failed to score a single point in the second half. The ground was pretty good although a little soft underfoot from all the recent rain. They probably could have fit another 5 thousand or so in there. Special thanks to the Duporth Tavern for their steak sandwiches and free shuttle bus to the game.

Gilhooleys Strathpine

Being a new member of the Strathpine community. Sarah and I haven't really had a chance to check out much of the local restaurants. So for Sarah's birthday yesterday we headed down to Gilhooleys. First impressions were not great. The smoking section was packed with a bunch of loud council workers (not that I minded that much, it is a pub after all). The main floor of the pub was a large empty concrete expanse. Almost as if the place was under construction. But looking at the many photos around the place, it seems like that was the look they were going for. The bar person also acted as the hostess, so we had to wait till they finished serving drinks before being shown our seats. We got a booth which was comfortable. Although we had to order our food at the bar. Strange considering we had to be shown our seats to begin with. I mean why bother with the 'wait here to be seated' sign only for them to disappear after seating you without taking any orders? The specials menu advertised a Chicken Parmigiana plus 3 vodkas or 3 beers for $14.95. Which was great, although since i was driving i went with the steak. Sarah had the lamb shanks. The food came pretty quickly, although there wasn't a great deal of customers eating at that time. Sarah's lamb shanks were good. Plenty of meat served on mash potato. My steak however was not great. For the second time in a few days (the other at the Victory Hotel) I was given a medium rare steak that was pink in the middle (good) but charcoal black on the outside. The whole steak tasted like it was cooked in a fireplace. I'm not sure if this is the new way to cook steaks in pubs. But it will put me off ordering steaks for a while. Anyway the accompanying chips were good. Overall not a fantastic experience. I give it 1 and half stars.

Eastbound and Down

Today's post concerns the very low-brow and ridiculous comedy that airs on HBO. The show is centered on a former major league baseballer Kenny Powers and his attempts and making a comeback. The show has no real direction, contains mass amounts of vulgarity and humour targeted at the very low points of our amusement....

And I love it..

Danny McBride as the old, fat wannabe baseballer is hilarious and continues to surprise me at the depths of his low character (last nights episode he almost sent his only son floating down the river in a wicker basket Moses-style).

Steve Little as Steve Janowski, Kenny's pathetic side-kick who provides a ton of laughs as he recklessly follows Kenny everywhere (often to his own downfall).

Will Ferrell guests stars as Kenny's arch enemy Ashley Schaeffer. Ferrell also produces the show with Adam Mackay through his production company Gary Sanchez Productions.

Jason Sudekis as Shane. This new character is Danny's new catcher at the Myrtle Bay Mermen. I love this actor, his roles in Hall Pass and Horrible Bosses are hilarious. His character here is similar to Kenny's although he seems to be in a dumber lower-class (if that were possible)

This show is definitely not for everyone. Sarah doesn't rate it. I give it 3 stars and look forward to watching this last series.

"You're fucking out. And I'm fucking in!" Kenny Fucking Powers

Project X

Busy day today, so short post

Saturday morning I saw the film Project X. Pretty funny party movie in the vein of superbad. Lots of nudity, drinking and party craziness. The movie is about a bunch of nerds who throw a party to become cool. The party gets crazier throughout the night. Check it out if you're into that kind of thing. 3 stars

The good, the bad and the ugly

To take a phrase from Peter Griffin. You know what really grinds my gears?

Let's start with last nights NRL game.

The good
Finally the off-season is over. League is back and started off with a bang. The dragons finally getting over the top of the knights in a thriller. Despite the absence of Wayne Bennett and full back Boyd, the dragons were solid for most of the night. Soward behind most of their attacking raids. For the knights, Mullen was back to his best and should look to get back the half back spot in the NSW origin team.

The bad
Knights defence was slow and gave the dragons too much room to move. For the dragons their new full back Stanley and prop Matt Prior continued to cough the ball up at crucial times.

The ugly
Channel Nine. After all the build up for the season launch and even though they have a perfectly good high definition channel at their disposal. The game was an hour delayed in regular definition. Inexcusable in these times. The AFL are way ahead in this regards. Not only does Channel Nine do this, they also do not allow foxtel to pick up their slack and broadcast the game live. Even more amusing was the ads for sportsbet broadcasting "We hope you are enjoying the game between the knight and dragons. Don't forget you can bet live right now with tab sportsbet." If this were true, i could make some serious cash with an hour's future knowledge.

And that's what grinds my gears.

P.S. Foxtel is not entirely blameless in this discussion. Im growing tired of watching the NBA on ESPN where they are advertising the second part of the double header only to switch to a replay of a college game from a week ago instead of the live game our American friends are watching.

Beer

For lack of a better subject. Today it is beer. Since the start of the year, I have cut down on my consumption. Purely to help my weight loss. Although it hasn't had a huge impact in that department. It has helped me appreciate the taste of beer more. Instead of throwing back a bunch XXXX golds while watching the footy, I am now a little more selective. Since I am now looking at one 6 pack on a Saturday night, I make sure it's a good one. My favourite beer of choice is usually a James Squire. Either a Sundown Larger or a 150 Lashes Pale Ale. I also don't mind the Indian Pale Ale. I'm not sure how long the 150 Lashes will be around for, so I'll probably get some of that this Saturday while watching the Pies in their round 2 NAB cup game.