I’m not a gambling man. Except for the golf, obviously. But we went along to the horseracing yesterday, and you can’t do that without a bit of betting.
I didn’t win on many races, but when I did win, I won (relatively) big.
So, after a great afternoon with a lot of laughs and fun, I still came home with more money than I set out with.
And a smile on my face as Sheffield Wednesday got relegated.
It was a good day.
I’ve managed to achieve the heady goal of doing at least 10,000 steps (or more) (very often very much more) every single day for over two years now. Since the day after this day, in fact.
And yes, that’s even allowing for last year’s extra February day.
Much like publishing a blog post every day, I generally have no issue with completing more than 10,000 steps. Only occasionally will you find me wandering around the house or garden in the late evening dragging the count from the mid 9000s to the holy grail of five figures. There have been times when it was a bit of a struggle, though.
Meh. Might not be much to anyone else, but it’s made sure that I keep myself vaguely active since 2019 (and before).
Here’s to the next two years. (No guarantees.)
… a beginners go-to guide.
I’m always getting questions about the beagle and ways in which it could possibly be useful. Usually, I’m completely lost as to how to provide any truthful answer to those asking, but it seems that I might actually have stumbled upon a potential application for said canine: sports betting.
I don’t do much sports betting, and when I do, it’s just for fun, rather than trying to make any huge profit from it. The thrill of predicting the win or the result or the scorer is what I’m after, not enough cash to feed the family for the rest of the month. Mostly, anyway. But I’ve never put any money on golf before. I have limited interest in watching lots of (predominantly) American men trying to stroke their balls as few times as possible. However, that was before I caught sight of Bryson Dechambreau (French name, American bloke) and his weird swing. Careful now.
I asked resident 6000 miles… golf expert, the Tall Accountant, about him and we had a short but informative exchange about who might or might not win the US Masters golf tournament. I came out of that conversation with 2 names in mind: Mr OfBedroomWater* and last year’s winner and competition favourite (and husband of Wayne Gretzky’s daughter) (just google it) Dustin “DJ” Johnson. Probably no point betting on either of those though, because one wasn’t going to win and the other was too big a favourite and when he did win (spoiler: he didn’t), you’d get R3.50 back for your efforts. So I chose two other non-American names at random (apart from them not being American, obviously): Canada’s Corey Conners and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama. But then again, there’s no point in betting on all of them to win because that can’t happen, and so I decided to allow the beagle to choose what I should do. However, simply asking the beagle which one of these competitors was worthy of my hard-earned cash seemed to fall – quite literally – upon deaf ears. It’s not like the beagle ever listens to me anyway, unless there’s food involved. And that was the thought that gave me my great idea: I’d get an answer using a system not dissimilar to the Paul the Octopus thing during the 2010 World Cup.
I assigned each of my would-be heroes to a equally sized piece of bacon-flavoured beagle biscuit and placed them carefully on the floor in the kitchen. Corey Conners got snaffled well before the official start due to my foolish trust of the beagle, and had to be replaced. But then, with the kitchen door closed and the beagle on one side of it and the biscuits on the other, I reacquainted myself one more time with each of the crunchy golfers and then released the hound.
And there was no question of who the beagle was going for – making a direct bee-(gle)-line straight to Mr Matsuyama before immediately gobbling down Messrs Conners, Johnson and BonjourCavaBienMerciEtToi.
And that’s why my money went on the Japanese guy who would eventually, some 3½ days later, win the 2021 US Masters Golf Competition and win me untold riches. Well done beagle, well done Mr Matsuyama, well done me.
So, should you be struggling over a decision involving this sort of thing, please just remember that in 2016, a crack commando dog was sent to prison by a veterinary court for a crime it didn’t commit. This dog promptly escaped from a maximum security kennel to the Cape Town Southern Suburbs underground.
Today, still wanted by the SPCA it survives as a soldier of fortune and snorfer of biscuits.
If you have a sports betting problem, if no one else can help – and if you can find it – maybe you can hire… My Beagle.
Beagle is only available when not napping.
Applicant must supply own biscuits.
Past performance in no indicator of future success.
Winners know when to stop.
Other terms and conditions may apply.
* a rough translation
I wired up a couple of pool lights yesterday. We’ve never had a swimming pool light before, and We’ve never really wanted one, but the new place came with a pool with a light (that didn’t work) and so when we resurfaced the pool, it just made sense to replace the aging, yellowing light fitting as well. That then meant that we needed to replace the transformer for the light as well, which I finally got round to doing yesterday.
It’s probably not a good idea to just have a bash at installing a pool light transformer when you’ve never done it before and there’s 50,000 litres of salty water full of people on the other end of the cable. That’s why I elicited the assistance of an electrician friend who came round and helped out for the price of a cup of coffee and a damn fine braai afterwards. Everyone’s a winner.
And then, as darkness fell the pool light revealed itself. So cool:
A bit like this, worryingly:
Yes, folks: “a classic example of Cherenkov radiation is the characteristic blue glow of an underwater nuclear reactor.”
Koeberg finally has a local rival. And were going to have no issues with loadshedding anymore. There may be other problems, but not having electricity won’t be one of them.
Honestly, I can’t see us using the pool light much. It’s a bit of a gimmick, but once we’re allowed to have people around again, it’ll be a very cool accompaniment to the party ambiance.
However, this pool light is going to get a lot of use:
This was another one that we wired in yesterday. The pool table was an impulsive Gumtree purchase. It used to be in a Stones bar somewhere (possibly this one?) before being refurbished by a guy who refurbishes pool tables. He needed to get rid of this one so he could use the space to refurbish his next pool table (a novelty L-shaped one, nogal!) and so added the very cool lights as a sweetener to the deal. I thought we’d put them up just to add to the look of the room which will eventually be our party/bar/entertainment room (yes, like the rest of the place, it needs a lot of work), but WOW – what a difference they made. You can even see the balls on the table now. No more excuses about weird shadows or dim corners. It’s pukka stuff.
I know that these are silly, nice-to-have things, but the work on this place will take many months – probably many years – and occasionally, we need to concentrate on more than just the essentials.
Right now though, it’s back to the rather more mundane jobs.
Day 3-4-3, although we were actually playing a 5-3-2.
Too little too late? Possibly. Probably, even. But the commitment and the sheer effort last night was a proper Sheffield United performance, not one of a team seemingly doomed to relegation.
Our defeating both Aston Villa and the best efforts of the officials and their laughable red cardism was wonderful to watch (if slightly stressful at the end).
You have to watch that DMG goal a couple of times. Once to see the inch-perfect cross-field ball, and then a second time to ignore the inch-perfect cross-field ball, and watch McGoldrick’s run once he had pinged the pass out to George Baldock.
What a goal. What a performance.
And a Sheffield Double as Wendy lost to relegation rivals Toytown in the last minute.
Dreamy.