Finals Fever

September is footy finals month and if your team happens to be one of the lucky ones to make it, it's a pretty exciting time.
Like I've mentioned before, pretty much everyone has a team they barrack for (even if they aren't major fans of the sport).

Our team (The Bulldogs) made it into the finals again this year so we went to the September 5th game (first game of the finals) against Collingwood where we unfortunately lost. Luckily we finished in the top 4 this year, so we have two chances. If you lose the first week, you can come back in the second week to play another game (it's an elimination game from then on).

Western Bulldogs vs Collingwood Sept. 5th 2010
66,545 people in attendance

We also went to the September 11th semi-final game against Sydney where we won!!

Western Bulldogs vs Sydney Swans Sept. 11th, 2010 39,596 people in attendance

There's a very interesting dynamic between supporters and certain team's supporters have certain reputations (I won't go too much into this because it's of course all subjective but if you ask people, they'll have an opinion about which supporters are considered the worst/most intimidating). When you're at a game with 66,000 people and your team is losing (especially if you're playing Collingwood), it's a pretty lonely place. Even yesterday at the Sydney game, when they were winning they were LOUD and it didn't sound like there were a lot of Bulldogs supporters there at all\.

The atmosphere at these finals games is incredible. This is my first time going to finals games (we went to the pre-season NAB cup final earlier in the year which was awesome too but this is even crazier) and you can definitely tell that there's something different about these games. Every time we go to a big game I'm amazed at how many people are there, hearing the roar of the crowd from the other side of the grounds. Incredible. The fact that 66 thousand people all turn up to watch something (there's usually 25 thousand plus at regular season games -- and there's more than one game on per week!) amazes me.

The opening bounce
Western Bulldogs vs Sydney Swans Sept. 11th, 2010

Last night was a real nail-biter so if we play well next week, I'm sure there will be a lot of excitement!


Temperature: +13C
Sunrise: 6:26am
Sunset: 6:08pm

I don't think they got the memo...

As seen at the top of my e-mail today (click to enlarge):

This kind of cracks me up and makes me a little homesick. It's like yahoo is telling me to go home! haha
It's kind of funny that ad showed up because at work on Thursday, some people were printing photos of their trip to Victoria (BC). It was weird to see because a lot of their pictures were of places we either visited/specifically took photos of/specifically noticed (like the giant Commonwealth Games plaque at the Inner Harbour) or they were places I visited/walked past when I lived there. (it's not like I flicked through their photos but if you're standing at the machine when they come out, you happen to see them).

I've managed to knit HALF a row on my sweater since I posted. I'm planning to do a bit more today since I don't have much else to do at the moment (I COULD do the dishes but I'll leave that for a while longer).

Here's another photo of our livingroom now that the TV is in place and there's not so much stuff all over.

It's weird to have so much space. Our livingroom back home was SO cramped. We had Glen's youngest nephew over for a few hours yesterday and we pushed the coffee table up against the bookshelves so he could run around. He had a lot of fun bouncing a rubber ball around the room (and was surprisingly uninterested in all the colourful things on the shelves).

We went to the footy with work last weekend. I had a lot of fun. The atmosphere was CRAZY. There were 71,000 people there (yes, really) and it was SO loud. It's by far the biggest (attendance wise) game I've ever been to.

I don't really follow either of the two teams that we went to see so I got to spend more time people watching - and let me tell you, there were some real characters out there.

There was one guy (pictured above in the striped toque) that was SO into the game and spent a lot of the match on his feet yelling & screaming at the players/umpires. At one point he didn't think he was being heard so he ran down to the front of the boards (when I took the picture) and started yelling from there. haha he was pretty intense. We also had the interesting experience of sitting behind the goals so we had to watch out when the teams kicked the ball (and when people in the crowd thew the ball back).
I went to a Bulldogs game the next day but didn't get any pictures because the bag checker/security woman told me that they'd take my camera away if I had it out... booo... It's not like I even had my (crappy in low light) zoom lens on. I had my 50mm lens which is no better than I regular lens - it doesn't even have zoom. I tried to explain this to the woman but didn't want to push my luck. Apparently only point and shoot cameras are allowed even though my point and shoot camera would've zoomed more AND can take video (which isn't allowed). I suppose I could've taken my camera out once we got to our seats but oh well...


Temperature: +26C
Sunrise: 6:48am
Sunset: 5:51pm

Back from the dark ages!

And by that I mean not having internet!

We're pretty much all moved in to our new place and are slowly getting things hooked up. We borrowed Glen's parent's internet stick thing to use while we saved up enough money to get the internet hooked up properly. This might've lasted a little longer if the internet stick didn't COMPLETELY suck. After about a week I was ready to run it over with the car. The thing was SO slow and unreliable. You pretty much had to stand on your head and hum the hokey-pokey backwards for it to even think of connecting. So yeah, blogging was completely out of the question and so was pretty much most internet browsing.
I think it just might be the area we're in because the stick thing worked fine at Glen's parent's.

So, we've been slowly setting in to life in our own place again, getting used to the neighbourhood and all that sort of thing. We're not totally unpacked yet (minus all the stuff we use on a regular basis). Tomorrow we're going to IKEA to pick up some bookshelves so we can unpack a bit more and at least make the livingroom look decent. We bought a 3-seater couch and two recliner chairs (package deal) a week ago and they were delivered this past Saturday. It's AWESOME to have furniture! (also, first couch/etc that is actually my own and not someone's hand-me-downs that were left in the apartment when they moved).
They have a lot of free-to-air channels here so we don't need to pay for cable TV. AWESOME. In Inuvik you were lucky if you got a fuzzy B&W CBC. (I think we have 22 digital channels but some of them are repeats.)

So besides all that, I've started working at Glen's work on Mondays in their photo centre/cashiering. I'm going to be looking for something on top of that (obviously) but it's nice to have that little bit of extra money coming in (something crazy - casuals get paid WAY more than full time staff - sucks that I'm casual but yay for getting paid a decent amount of money!).

We went to the footy last weekend too and had an AWESOME time. It was the first time that the team Glen follows has been in a final in YEARS (as in Glen has never seen them in a final) and they WON! Woo! It was great! We had a great time screaming/yelling/cheering (Glen lost his voice and I almost did too!). Ahhh so fun.

And yeah! Once we get a bit more done in the house I'll post some more pictures. I've been wanting to post an update for WEEKS now (even just to say our internet sucked) but the site just would NOT load.


Temperature: +29C
Sunrise: 7:20am
Sunset: 7:37pm

More Sports

We went to our first footy game of the season last night (Bulldogs vs Hawks). It's still just the pre-season but we figured we may as well go (Glen's favourite team was playing his BIL's favourite team so we went with Glen's sister & her family).

There were 17,222 people there.

AFL is THE thing here and most people have a team they say they support even if they aren't really into it (there are of course people that hate it or don't follow it at but it's pretty rare - at least around this family!). There's no way I could explain it properly so here's a quote from answers.com explaining it:

"Variety of football played between two teams of 18 players. The field is oval, 145 – 200 yd (135 – 185 m) long, with four goalposts at each end. A six-point goal is scored when the oval ball is kicked through the two central goalposts. A one-point "behind" is scored when the ball is kicked over the behind line extending between the central and outer goalposts. The game's finest spectacle is the "mark" in which competing players leap, sometimes riding on the back of an opponent, in order to catch the ball directly from the kick of another player. The player making such a catch is awarded a mark, an unhindered kick from behind the spot of the catch."

If that intrigues you, you can read more here . If you think Canadians are passionate about their hockey, Australians (especially Melburnians) are even more passionate about their football (and it can kind of be scary to be sitting around some of those people at the game... A lot of them yell abuse at various players which can be amusing until they start yelling their abuse at you because of the team you support).

3/4 time strategy meeting.

Depending on what Glen's work schedule is like, we'll be going to as many games as we can this season. Should be fun.

And if you're curious the team we support won (yay!).


Temperature: +17C
Sunrise: 7:02am
Sunset: 8:03pm