I’ve been watching it since August last year and I can’t believe I’m only four seasons in! If I get some more time off training I might be able to get through a few more. I started watching it on my older brother’s recommendation. He actually works for a Senator in the Liberal party. It didn’t take long for me to get hooked on the show because I’m pretty interested in American politics.
My wife Elise is an occasional watcher, but she tends to read a book when I’m watching.
My favourite character is a guy called Josh because he has his finger in a million pies. He reminds me of Boomer (Brent Harvey) and Drew (Petrie) because they’re always trying to do extra things on the side to earn extra coin.
After The West Wing, I made scrambled eggs on toast. The key to making scrambled eggs is a good Baxter’s tomato chutney.
Paul Turk picked me up just after 11am and we made our way to Ballarat. It was either drive by myself, or go with PT. I thought having company for the trip was better than having no company. The only downside is that PT doesn’t drive a Mazda.
We should have taken my Mazda 3 SP25 (gratuitous plug). It has Bose speakers (plug), leather seats and a tiptronic transmission (double plug). What makes a car is a good set of wheels. PT’s car is not too bad I suppose…for a Hyundai.
We had to stop off for Powerades and PT bought a can of Monster. The bloke lives off caffeine and has about three or four cans of Monster a day. I’m not sure if it’s healthy but it is amazing.
PT wouldn’t speed because he reckons he’s had too many fines on the way to Ballarat. That’s clearly not the case for Conor Meredith who made the coach look like he was going backwards. He has Sam Wright and Alan Obst with him and apparently overtook Brad Scott at one stage and disappeared into the distance.
Brad was reportedly driving like a Nana and Conor must have thought he was on an autobahn in Europe.
We arrived in sunny Ballarat and got a text from the club warning us about speed cameras on the highway. It would have been nice to get that message about an hour and a half earlier.
We had a civic reception at the Ballarat Town Hall to welcome us to the city. The food was great and the Mayor spoke really well. It was a bit of a sweat fest though because the room was really hot.
Ben Cunnington is rooming with me for this trip and I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into the room to find him sitting on the single bed. He told me to take the double and showed a lot of respect which was appreciated.
We went into the sports room and played a bit of indoor tennis with some of the other boys. It’s a mini court and Liam Anthony and Levi Greenwood were the best players on the day. The boys kept their tops on for this sporting event unlike the cricket sessions on the Gold Coast.
We played doubles and had mini-tiebreakers which were the first to seven points.
Majak Daw and Alan Obst were the worst players. Obba and Nathan Grima lost seven-nil and should have done a nudie run around the court but they refused.
Levi (Greenwood) had white line fever and was probably going a bit too hard. I lost both my games despite displaying a devastating forehand. I take inspiration from Roger Federer on the forehand, and Justine Henin on the backhand. Justine reminds me of one of the physios that used to work at the club, Tash. I would have loved to have played tennis, but don’t think I would have been good enough.
We were talking about Lachie Hansen and another funny thing he said during the week. It happened one day when we were playing FIFA 2010 on the X-Box at the club. The goalie had run out away from the goal to kick the ball away and the other team tried to header it back to catch the goalie out. Lachie said “That’s amazing. Imagine if you could kick a goal with a header from half way.” The things that come out of that guy’s mouth leave me speechless. He is great entertainment though.
The guys that weren’t playing in the intra-club match had to complete a short training session prior to 7pm. We also had a ten minute run which I did with Michael Firrito.
Liam Anthony had some issues during his run. Apparently he needed to go to the bathroom and at one stage almost walked off the track to relieve himself.
Speaking of Liam, I found out tonight that he’s got a massive man-crush on Ben Cousins. He is actually obsessed with him and admitted to being bitterly disappointed last year when we played Richmond and Cousins didn’t line up.
I watched the intra-club match from the coaches box with Daniel Wells and Liam Anthony. Brad was pretty composed and it was a good insight to see what the coaches were thinking. I thought the best players were Cruize Garlett, Brent Harvey, Marcus White and Luke ‘Car keys’ Delaney.
At dinner Majak claimed to be too tired to eat. It was 9pm after all and I suggested that it was probably past his bedtime as was the case on the Gold Coast. That got us talking about assistant coach Shane Watson who sleeps on the floor on a regular basis. He has about five spots in his house where he sleeps because he has trouble nodding off. He says ‘the harder the floor the better’. On the pre-season camp, our head of player development Jon Haines, jumped out of bed and nearly stepped on Watto’s head because he didn’t know he was asleep on the floor beneath him. He claims to have tried hypnotherapy in the past and says it’s been the way for him for about 10 or more years. I don’t understand why he doesn’t just buy a really hard mattress.
It’s nearly lights out for me now after I finish watching an NBA show on ESPN. It featured Yao Ming who I was told was the result of some experiment in China. The story goes that they deliberately found two really tall people to have a baby together and Yao was the result. That’s why he got to be seven feet six inches tall.
