A Week in Paradise
January 22, 2007 by Dave Earley
Filed under Uncategorized
It hasn’t really been Paradise this week, but neither has it been an Inferno.
In fact, it’s been much cooler than an inferno, with our air conditioner finally getting installed! The guy came on Monday, I helped him install it and had cool comfort that night. He came back Tuesday to ‘finish’ the job, but he’s not happy with how it looks. I couldn’t care less, it’s there and it’s working, that’s all I need.
Unfortunately he wants us to pay him. Our lease said the owner would purchase an air conditioner, and we would install it. To us that meant getting my brother-in-law and a friend of his who have installed several air conditioners to do it for free. When the owner’s tradesman/cousin said he would install it I thought that meant, ‘as part of my service to you since it’s almost a quarter of the way through the lease that this air conditioner was supposed to be a part of’.
But no, once we were done, with my help the entire time both days he was here, he’s asking for payment. When I told him we would have otherwise done it ourselves at no cost, he said he’d get back to me, billing some to the owner and some to us “given the rent situation”. Cool.
I started rugby training last Monday night at Norths in Brisbane. I had to eat late since we didn’t finish with the air conditioner until almost 5.30, and so my four years without fitness work paid dividends come sprints at 7.30. That is, my body rejected in protest the small amount of food I had eaten earlier. Wednesday night was a much more relaxed affair, with only some lineout and scrummaging work before a relatively easy 3km run to finish the night. Returning again Thursday night, training wasn’t as bad, but I had to pull over for 15 minutes on the way home because I thought I was about to throw up out the window while I was driving.
So while last week may have been the lower reaches of purgatory, I had expected this week to be a further descent. I’m working Tuesday and Thursday nights from 9pm to 5am, with Thursday’s shift following rugby training. Unfortunately, since training on Monday and Wednesday has been cancelled, Thursday is likely to be brutal.
And why has training been cancelled? Because the club makes more money from the touch football competition than it does from the rugby team. So the rugby team vacates the playing field. A strange scenario if you’re looking to field a well-trained team when the season actually starts.
At least this week is not as was expected: go straight to work till midnight from Monday’s training. Work 9-5am Tuesday night. Go straight to work till midnight from Wednesday’s training. Go straight to work till 5am from Thursday’s training.
It’s yet to be seen how we’ll cope.
