I'm back

I can't fit into the day all the stuff that I used to. That's why I've been gone for quite a while. Is being 50 something to do with it? I don't think I am trying to cram more things in, but maybe I am.

 

What kept me very busy for the first two months of this year was the Rottnest Channel Swim. It happens during the last weekend of February every year. We have about 2,300 swimmers and about 10,000 spectators on the day. Some watch the start at Cottesloe

Beach, some are crew members on boats and some go to Rottnest Island to see the swimmers arrive.

 

Some solo swimmers ready to start. The lights in the background are their support boats.

 

 

I was the race director, which is a position that has responsibility for everything on the day. The buck  stopped with me! It involved a lot of meetings for the few weeks before the swim and maybe because I am well and truly over 50, I would just get home and not want to do anything else! Is it just me?

 

There is only one red T-shirt and it belongs to the Race Director - me!

 

 

I have researched being permanently tired and have found that it can be due to any number of things. Working long hours, then having meetings out of hours and trying to keep up my swimming training probably didn't help. Also, the stress of the week before the swim - the weather was really bad and I might have had to cancel the whole thing!

 

Imagine that - 2,300 swimmers who have been training for the better part of a year let down by the weather at the last minute. That is not to mention a few hundred international and interstate swimmers who have travelled a long way to participate in the swim. The swim has been cancelled only once before, and it was me who cancelled it. The weather was so bad that no-one complained about the cancellation. Some swimmers who had travelled from Japan were very nice and said that is the risk of open water swimming.

 

Anyway, all my thoughts were consumed by that and there was no space in my head for blogging or doing the assignments that I was meant to be doing for an online course (big mistake - I need the motivation of having to go to a class everyweek otherwise I don't do what I am meant to do. Anyone got any suggestions?).



Hot, hot, hot

How hot can it be? We've just had almost a week of more than about 37 degrees here (more than about 100F). That's hot!

Christmas Day was very hot and I was very lucky to be able to spend it in an airconditioned house!

For those of you who don't live in Western Australia, here is how lots of us start each Christmas Day. We go to the beach, have a glass of champagne with breakfast and cool off in the water. Marvellous!

It was very hot all the way through to New Year's Day. I survived in my beautiful new house with the airconditioning on. I am a bit worried about my next electricity bill! Still, it was beautiful inside and like a furnace outside. I read several books. The first and second best was "Catch Me" by Lisa Gardner. It is about a woman in her late 20s who approaches Dective DD Warren to find her killer - she is going to be murdered in four days' time. DD Warren becomes involved and tries to work out who it will be. It was riveting reading! I couldn't put it down.

Then there was "Oh Dear Sylvia" by Dawn French. It was a total change of pace - a little bit of humour, a little bit of nastiness and a lot of discovering that Sylvia was a multi-layered person, who in the end did things for the right reason. It made me think of why people do things and sometimes everyone else thinks that what someone else does is wrong, or mean, or horrible, but there may be a reason behind it that is none of those things.

Next was another dectective mystery by John Connelly called "Burning Soul". This one was about a man called Randall Haight, who had been jailed for murder as a 14 year old. He and a friend had murdered a 14 year old girl and now in the town he lives in another 14 year old girl has gone missing. Someone is sending him photos of the barn where they killed the girl and his secret is now out. Detecitve Charlie Parker has to find out who is sending the photos and who took the girl. Was it Randall Haight? This one only took a couple of days to read, it was so good. I find I always rush through good books like this because I want to find out what happens, but then I get let-down when I finish, because there is no more to read.

After that I went to the library and found another Lisa Gardner book entitled "Love You More". Boy! How good was that? Even better than the first one. I only took about a day to read this one. A mother (a State Trooper near Boston) witnessed the murder of her husband and at the same time found out that her four year old daughter had been kidnapped by the same people. To save her daughter she must confess to the murder! This book too shows that the things people do may not be for the reasons that we think. Detective DD Warren and her partner have to find out why she killed her husband. Towards the end they realise that maybe she didn't and they have to work it all out,

Yesterday I read "Old Filth" by Jane Gardam, which is about a retired international lawyer with a practice in Hong Kong. He was a Raj Orphan, a child born to English parents in the Far East and then sent back to England at the age of about four or five to be fostered and educated. It was a lovely story and completely different from all the others that I had read. I liked his name Old Filth because it stands for Failed in England Try Hong Kong! There is another book from his wife's perspective, "The Man in the Wooden Hat". I haven't read that one yet.

Every Christmas we have two weeks off work and every year I tell myself that I am going to do all sorts of things around the house and every year it is too hot so I just read lots of books. At least I enjoyed myself!

Rumours and gossip

What is it that makes nasty people nasty? Some of them spread gossip with the intent of causing trouble. I just don't get it.

 

A couple of nights ago, a man who was raising money for breast cancer research swam in the dark, overnight, from Rottnest to Perth. Some particularly nasty male (Doug) loves to spread viscious rumours and this one had me going on the escort boat. Then he raised the question of why was I sticking my nose into it. He has made a fool of himself before with the nasty things that he says and he did it again this time! He got the wrong Shelley. It was Shelley Taylor-Smith who was accompanying the swimmer, not me.

 

If he had stopped to think he would have realised that on the committee of the Rottnest Channel Swim Association I would be one of the ones who thought this guy was a maniac (I am scared of sharks, so why would you put yourself at risk by swimming in the dark) and that the Association should have nothing to do with it. Anyway, he never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.

 

Photo by sindorella

 

He must think of ways to discredit me all the time as this is just one in a long line of things he has done. He makes me think of the line by Wil Wheaton in the 'Big Bang Theory' where he says that he has rented space in Sheldon's head, for free! Sheldon spends his life worrying about Wil Wheaton and that just suits Wil Wheaton fine. If Doug spends his life thinking of ways to discredit me, it means that he is angry  with me a lot of the time. Actually, he is just an angry person, so if I get to him by just being me, I have rented space in his head for free, just like Wil Wheaton! What a waste of energy.

What is it that motivates people like this? Are they trying to make the other person look bad? Mostly, I think that they make themselves look bad.