Jampacked Weekend

Friday: Night; Western Force professional rugby. Awesome! My first live pro rugby match! Sadly, Western Australia, but mostly Perth let me down. Rugby isn’t really a big deal on this side of the country; over here they fancy sports like cricket and Aussie rules football. As a result of this apathetic feeling towards rugby the stadium was only about half full for the season opener! For those of you in America, I’m having a hard time trying to explain how shocking this was to me. The Western Force play in the “Super 14,” this league is comprised of 14 rugby clubs in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (arguably, three of the best rugby playing nations in the world, at least judging by the number of rugby world cups won between the three: five (there have only been six rugby world cups contested, the next will be held in New Zealand in 2011… but I digress)). Following the preceeding logic, the quality of play in the Super 14 should be just as good as, if not better than any other rugby league in the world, yet, the only professional rugby team in the western 80% of Australia cannot even fill up its stadium for their home opener? Take a walk into my imagination with me… let’s say there were only 14 teams in the NFL and these franchises were spread pretty evenly through the US, Canada, and Mexico, can you imagine EVER being able to find tickets to one of those games? OK, I know that such a comparison isn’t really fair since the sporting culture in America is, dare I say it, much stronger than it is in Australia; plus there are a lot more people in the state of California than all of Australia, so I guess I can let the seeming lack of fan support slide, I just expected more from you Perth. Anyway, the game was very exciting right down to finish, but sadly the Force weren’t able to pull out a victory.

Saturday: Morning; Cate and I helped to coach some little kids basketball teams and it was great! I miss all my children from the Boys and Girls Club so it was nice to get back into that groove again. My team was comprised of eight-ten year old boys and girls and after a heated discussion, we named ourselves the cheetahs. I had to leave my kiddies to referee another game, but apparently I had prepared them so well in the 15 minutes that I knew them before the contest began that they were able to soldier onward to victory. Afternoon; Cate was scheduled to play a basketball game with friends from church so we drove over to the gym, Cate in full uniform ready to go, only to find that her game had been forfeited due to a lack of players. On the upside, Cate and I got to play some three on three basketball with four random guys who were at the gym (this is good news because Cate, understandably, does not like playing pickup with just anyone since many of the pick-up players at CU were so out of control that she feared for her health. As a result of this general precaution we rarely actually get to play basketball together unless it’s one on one, which really is a limited amount of fun for both of us. Cate is a MUCH better basketball player (dribbling/shooting/ you know, basketball stuff) than I am, but I’m a really good faker so I can get by playing basketball because I’m faster and stronger; so we end up tweaking the rules for me to level the playing field and it’s a pretty good time, but we would both rather just go all out in a non- one on one setting. Night; Valentine’s Day? Oh yeah! Cate and I got moderately dressed up and headed out to a wonderful steakhouse near the docks in Fremantle (suburb of Perth) called Char Char Bull. The evening was really lovely and we were just finishing up our meals (surf and turf featuring prawns as the surf bit with lemon, lime, and bitters (llab for short) which is a delicious drink composed of bitters, lime juice, and lemon-lime soda) when a waiter brought us two more glasses of llab. He set the tasty beverages down on the table and said they were compliments of the two gentlemen sitting about 15 feet away from us. Now upon receiving our round of llab, two thoughts wrestled in my head 1) Um… guys don’t buy other guys drinks unless they are interested in said guys, however, I am clearly taken… by a woman. 2) Maybe they overheard me talking to Cate about how they seemed to be a little too playful with a female member of the waitstaff and they felt bad for presenting themselves in such a bad light and as such, felt compelled to buy us llab to make up for it. Cate and I just could not get over what these two guys might be trying to say/ do, so we asked our waitress (the one whom they were being overly- friendly with) what their deal might be and she just told us that they were two nice guys who came in the restaurant all the time. This lowered my guard enough that I thought we should go over to the table and thank them, but they were gone by the time I had actually decided to get up. So, we will never know the mystery of the llab, but instead will always be left with the question, “why us?” Sure, we are a fantastically cute couple… but it was Valentine’s… at a restaurant…there were plenty of cute couples that night, heck, one couple got engaged right next to our two drink buyers, but they chose us. Freaky. Oh well.

Sunday: Morning; Delicious eggs (with chilli powder)/ham/ OJ breakfast. Mid-Morning/Afternoon; Cate has invited three co-workers over for lunch so we frantically rush around the house and to the grocery store to prepare our lunch feast. Grilled chicken, nicely spiced, with roast potatoes, and a garden salad. Nothing really happened at lunch, just eating and talking. Evening; we were meant to go to church, but instead decided to just relax at home watching The Office (America), good times.