The toss of a coin

By -

 We had an interesting and financially lucrative evening at the quiz this week. There are a large number of teams (up to 25) that now regularly compete, and just a handful usually occupied the top three money-winning spots. Additional money-winning spots of 10th, 11th and 12th were added some time ago to try and make it a little fairer. This week we fared badly only scoring 78 points and coming 12th. This meant we won $20, the same as coming third. 


During the evening Pete, the quiz master, also does a random bonus competition which involves tossing a coin. Everybody who wants to participate stands up. Hands on head is for heads, hands on bottom is for tails. Pete tosses the coin and those who guess incorrectly sit down. Further rounds of coin tossing continue until there is a winner, or joint winners if both choose the same coin toss outcome. At the first round this week Danny, our “team captain”, went for heads, and heads it was. He was unsure which option to go for next so Mike, one of our team members, got out a coin and tossed it. Danny adopted the same position as Mike’s coin toss and this turned out to be the same as Pete’s coin toss. The same thing happened for the next round, and the next. In total, Mike and Pete’s coin tosses came up the same for six consecutive rounds! Danny was one of only two left standing at the end and won $25. Our pot of funds for a team meal out were nicely swelled with our winnings.


We had some wintery weather at the beginning of the week, and quite a frost on Tuesday morning:



Things have improved a little as the week has progressed, though most of the laundry has been dried inside. Nicky has been able to get a range of edibles planted in the garden along with some renga-renga lilies that we were given on Wednesday and Friday. I have cut the grass front and back for the first time in a few weeks. Fortunately it is not growing quickly at the moment.


I had my flu and Covid vaccinations on Monday, and did the supermarket shopping while Nicky was at the hairdressers on Tuesday morning. John (from the quiz team) called in for a cuppa in the afternoon and was still drinking his second mug when Nicky returned from Home Group. She had a family of three generations visit the library on Thursday but the rain was quite heavy at times. 


We are predicted to have a showery Matariki weekend, though the forecast rain for Friday wasn’t as heavy or prolonged as expected. Even so, we didn’t feel like venturing into the garden so pottered inside and we didn’t attempt to see the star cluster just before dawn. It will be a weekend Maori new year celebrations being held all over Aotearoa.


Take care, Rick and Nicky.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Short List

By -
Image
Our list of things to be done to finish the house build has become much shorter this week, due to visits from various tradies every day except for Wednesday, when we won the America’s Cup again. Coincidence? On Monday Caleb came and did the tiling of the window sill behind the gas hob to make it legal. He also tiled splash backs for us in the downstairs loo, shower room and laundry. This was partially to use up the one whole black tile and three sections of grey tile that we had left over from the original tiling in the shower room. However, due to the way they had to buy the extra tiles, we now have four whole tiles and bit of another left over! Hey-ho. All the tiling looks really good and works well. Tuesday was Bert’s turn. He finished the balustrade and built a retaining wall by the drive to stop the gravel disappearing in the rain. This has produced a nice “boxed” area which Nicky is looking forward to planting. He did a couple of other minor fixes too. Thursday was the “big”...
Read more

Weeds and lurgy

By -
Image
 Nicky’s week again began with a Monday morning funeral at Christ Church. Jill was very popular and well liked, and the service was very well attended.   With a Vestry meeting next week Louise came over for lunch on Tuesday to discuss the Pastoral Care report that Nicky will submit. We had tomato soup with the walnut bread that I had made on Sunday. I also bought a farmhouse loaf while shopping but we didn’t break into that. Nicky and I have been enjoying it through the week. Home group was in the afternoon over at Josie’s. I cooked us some chicken for dinner, but just as we finished eating Nicky started vomiting. Nicky seemed to be alright on Wednesday morning as we both worked in the garden, but by the afternoon she was starting to feel like she was coming down with a cold. She wore a mask while we attended the Candidates meeting for the upcoming Local Elections, which was very useful on helping us make our decisions for voting. The event was unusually running ahead of sched...
Read more

Fair enough

By -
Image
 While we at one of the ceramics studios last Sunday, we were told about the Otaki Pottery Club “Festival of Pots and Garden Art”. This is held every January. After we had packed and cleaned the PSA unit in Raumati on Monday morning, and acquired mini quiches and raspberry and almond tarts from the patisserie for dinner, we started our journey home. On the way we decided we would take a short diversion into Otaki (population slightly under 4000) just to see what was there. Roadworks it turned out, but behind the roadworks a row of shops, one of which was a Bendon Outlet. Neither of the Bendon Outlets we had tried to get to in Auckland in September were operational, a little like the state of some of Nicky’s foundation garments. We parked the car so that Nicky could investigate some new unmentionables, but between us and the Outlet there was a bookshop… On the face of it you wouldn’t think a wee rural town would even have a bookshop, let alone lone a stunningly brilliant one. Along ...
Read more