Ne has this shoulder that when rotated makes an extremely loud pop, not to mention the excruciating pain. So I spent a month of getting up early to bring her to a physiotherapist before school. That ended when a specialist decided it was strained ligaments and gave her a cortisone shot and told her to not use the arm, which she thought was great for getting out of phys-ed class at school. But she kept playing netball on Saturdays - couldn't let the team down.

When a cancellation for the educational camp at Awhitu for a weekend in April came about, we grabbed it and went there with two other families. Spent the days along the beach or walking out to an island at low tide. Had a loud Bingo game one night. Was a good way to end the summer.

We gave up on bridge with kids. So we taught them 500 and pinochle and that got us through winter weekend nights when we weren't out and about.

It was a terrible winter. Coldest and wettest in 50 years. In the South Island they had record snowfalls. But the underlying drought down there for the past few years left all the hydro-lakes empty and we had a power crisis in the country. Had to re-open several coal and the one oil plant. It meant that we only had hot water heaters on for seven hours/day. So no baths and short showers. Every other street light turned off. Advertising signs off at night. Lights out in stores. etc. - Voluntary savings meant that we didn't have any brown-outs, let alone blackouts. Made it through til spring thaw and the snow melted. Now there is an investigation as it is felt that the electric corp ran the lakes down as cheapest form of power so they could make the biggest profit. It was a big talking point all those cold nights.

I was having a pain in my gut for over a year and my doctor finally decided to have it looked into literally. So I went onto the waiting list and was lucky when a cancellation came and I got in after three months. Went to hospital twice, once for colonoscopy and then again for gastroscopy. In between, I was to lab a couple times and they bled me dry. No ulcers, so the best guess is irritable bowel syndrome. Diet has taken care of it. And not surprizingly enough, lBS is reported in 80% of ME victims.

Ne went to her first prom. I don' t look forward to next year's. After looking at dresses and trying a couple "loaners-" Gail ended up making one - a burgundy velvet job, with black accessories. A couple months was spent organizing and changing plans. Pre-balI, ball, post- ball, sleeping-over at another girl's. Ne doesn't want to commit to one boy, so she went there via rented bus with another girl forsaking the limo-scene. That didn't prevent the spurned boy from giving her a corsage once they met at the dance. Gail and I thought that we had lucked out since the girls were being picked up by the other parents at 12:30AM. But we were up at 1AM by Ne who wanted to know if she could go to an after-ball party. You can guess what my answer was.

Was our 20th anniversary and I had wanted to go back to Fiji and stay at the same hotel - second honeymoon. But Gail didn't want to spend the money. Turned out that all of us caught colds around that time and we didn't feel like doing much anyway. So we went to Sizzlers that had just opened. What's the big deal? Only that it's the only place in this whole country that one can breaded shrimp. Place is so popular that you can wait in line for an over an hour. We went early and avoided the rush.

Ne may have been correct. Her netball team won all its games and to go with the championship trophy she was awarded the shield for most points scored by a team in the B-grade division. A netball team has only two shooters. Ne was the designated goal-shoot and scored 80% of the points, making her the top scorer for the league.