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…is now done and dusted and I am officially in the last 12 months of the last year of my youth.

Here are some highlights of how I spent my birthday weekend (Saturday’s are easily the best day to have a birthday as it’s so easy to justify spreading the celebrations over the entire weekend).

Friday:

• Late night screening of The Dark Knight at Forum 6 Cinemas

Saturday:

• (Very) early morning 60min run. SHORT TERM RUNNING GOAL ACHIEVED!
• Full hot breakfast @ Astor Inn (as part of an event conducted by St Aidan’s Presbyterian Church, Wagga Wagga)
• (Surprise) afternoon tea (birthday cake) with the WOAs and BOWs
• Dinner with my lovely wife at a good restaurant where we both ate too much and had leftovers for lunch the next day

Sunday:

• 10km run along Nail Can Hill, Albury.

I’m running again, slowly but surely. And not exactly without limitations, but I’m getting there, ever so slowly.

I reckon it will be well into spring before I am satisfactorily ‘fit’ again, as long as I stay injury-free. I had forgotten how awful the process of ‘getting fit’ is, and so I have a new appreciation for those people starting out on an exercise regime only to give up because it is all too hard.

Short term goals:
* 2 August, 2008
29th birthday – 1hr of constant easy running

* 17 August, 2008
10km Wagga fun run – complete event in 45min-ish

* 14 September, 2008
9km Wagga Lake to Lagoon – respectable time

Recent performances:
* July 18, 2008
Distance: 8.55km
Duration: 40′ 5″
Calories: 633

* July 17, 2008
Distance: 6.80km
Duration: 30′ 46″
Calories: 503

* July 16, 2008
Distance: 6.73km
Duration: 30′ 9″
Calories: 498

…compared to my girls at least

Clearly they are a little overcrowded. I guess I was not optimistic enough about the number of seeds that would actually germinate and grow into viable plants.

Maisie and I enjoyed our first fresh pea today. By the weekend, I should have a dozen or more to harvest.

The recommended retail price for an Asus EEE PC ultraportable laptop is $479 (June 2008). I just bought one from Officeworks for $303, and here’s how:

Do you know that Officeworks claim to offer the lowest prices?

Do you know that if you can find someone else offering a lower price for a stocked item, then Officeworks will beat that price by 5%?

Do you know that this deal applies to online prices as well?

With this information, I present to you a step-by-step guide to getting the cheapest price on your gadget of choice:

1. Go to an Officeworks store and confirm they stock the item

2. Go online to http://www.staticice.com.au and find the retailer that offers the absolute cheapest price.

In my case, I found a website called www.itestate.com.au which offered the Asus EEE laptop for $319 (plus delivery).

3. Take this information back into the Officeworks store and present the website to employee

4.They will then confirm that not only will they match that price, but they will beat it by 5%.

In my case, that meant $319 x 5% = an additional saving of $15.95 i.e. total cost $303.05 PLUS I saved having to pay shipping costs!

5. Purchase your heavily discounted item. Well done – be content that you have got yourself a real good deal.

Note: even bargain basement sites like Catch of the Day have only gone as low as $319.95 plus $14.95 postage for GREEN Asus EEE machines. And they only offer limited numbers of the product for a 24hr period.

is fun…

In an unexpected answer to an unasked prayer, I ended up a bus to play paintball in Table Top on Sunday with a bunch of other radio competition winners (read: a mostly expenses paid trip).

I’ve wanted to do this for quite a while, and the experience didn’t disappoint. In my head I was picturing large clunky guns shooting big clumps of paint, but in reality, the guns are lightweight and the paintballs are small marble-size ‘bullets’ that make all the authentic ‘ping’ ‘whoosh’ noises that I expect real flying bullets make.

Paintballing would certainly be more fun playing with a bunch of friends (e.g. bucks party), or at least with people who’s names you knew. It made it difficult to strategise and communicate with each other on the battlefield when we didn’t know each other.

200 paintballs was included for free as part of the deal, but 200 paintballs is not nearly enough! In a striking parallel to real warfare, the team with the most resources (read: most money to buy the most ammunition) usually wins. I managed to scrape through 3hrs of fun with only 300 paintballs, but that was only by being ’sniper-like’ and playing a gun-less medic for one round (which was actually really fun). Extra balls cost $22 p/100 and are available throughout the games. Some of the other players spent up to $200 on extra balls (discounts are available for bulk buying). Most players bought at least 200-300 extra balls. So with this in mind, buying a 500 ammo deal up front is probably the best way to go.

The guns don’t shoot 100% accurate, but that becomes part of the fun – learning to work with the random arc of the paintballs.

There are 7 or 8 different courses to play through, each suited to a some kind of scenario e.g. capture the flag, defend the POW, stalk the fortress etc.

The balls can sting and I walked away with 3 or 4 small bruisey welts. Some of the other guys ended up dotted all over with little red rings. I am glad I didn’t see the need to invest $5 in a crotch guard, but at least one of the guys was glad he did when he ended up with 3 bullseye gobs of paint splattered across his groin.

The little Round Hill Hotel in Morven proved a great spot to drop in for an ale on the way back to Wagga. And it was only then, much too late, did people slowly get to know each other a little better.

• I lose my appetite
• Getting out of bed feels like an insurmountable task
• Stringing a 2-word sentence together saps all my energy
• I feel like I am going to die

But today I am feeling a little better.

I was interviewed for 1502 2BS Gold radio this afternoon. Being a regional radio station, they wanted to get my perspective on the challenges and opportunities in moving from a capital city to a regional centre.

A colleague from work arranged the interview as a follow-up to a media release she distributed that talks about the appeal of working for CSU – how CSU campus locations offer the best of city living with the benefits of a regional lifestyle.

The interview was short, but I think it went well. It may even be airing as I type this. The conclusion that my interviewer drew, and with which I agree, is that I’m a happy tree-changer.

In 4 easy steps.

Step 1. Give up in frustration trying to find the auto tune button on your TV remote control.
Step 2. Give your toddler the remote control to play with.
Step 3. Turn your back for a minute to do something else.
Step 4. Turn back around when you hear the TV tuned in correctly.

I can’t guarantee it’ll work for you, but it sure worked for me. And I still can’t find what button Maisie pressed – but whatever button she pressed was surely the right one.