Where has all my money gone?

Already I am earning more than I have ever before yet, I am certainly not accumulating as quickly as I have done in the past. This weekend I am doing a budget. Not much fun, not very glamorous, but something that needs to be done.
In point of fact my disposable income at present allows me to spend almost with abandon. The caveat being that for the first 2 weeks while I survived on a measly advance payment from work and a final Centrelink working credit payment, followed by my first 2 pay cheques... I have been flat broke come pay day!
In addition I have made no inroads into my credit card balance, which means effectively I am saving nothing and spending everything!

Given my medium term goal of getting to the Asian Cup (assuming it doesn't fall over because of complete lack of organisation...) will require between $3000 -$10,000 I must make some changes to my fiscal philosophy.

If all goes well I will receive a healthy boost to disposable income shortly, but even I can recognise that unchecked, I could easily spend my way into luxurious oblivion.

Mean time, I am quite over soccer pre-season. Women's was more of a drama than it should have been and I am unsure if I will indeed return to coach there given the lack of control and amateur organisation. There are some wonderful benefits of the organisation of the women's club, not least being a healthy equipment and coach development fund to draw upon, as well as the social and development feel of the club.

As for men's pre-season, because the higher teams are taking forever to drop, and in particular Paimon's 2'nds it appears, I have been twiddling my thumbs for the last 2 weeks. And from tomorrow it may be ultra hectic as I sort through an unknown amount of players dropping down to fill my threadbare squad, while hopefully being efficient enough to pass them along to 7's and particularly 8's to have a look at so they can make deadline and not be annoyed at me! Hopefully I have made the right decision in being ruthless in preseason and passing on everyone below my acceptable skill level. I will know soon enough!

And last week at poker I CAME SECOND! Woot! hehe! That meant I had a poker night best finish of -$10! :D Last night we had some more poker and watched the Aus v China game which SUCKED so hard. I was bored out of my mind after Australia scored and then sat back for the whole match. I got schooled at poker, oh well! Must watch the first half of Sydney vs Urawa later but I left the disc at VJ's place. It looked pretty good. And Sydney was on the UEFA Champions League magazine show today in bits talking about Asian football! How cool hehe albeit the Japanese and Chinese teams were the focus of attention.

pre-season poker

Preseason is going well although this week looks like it could be very, very hectic. I effectively have this week to make my final selections. The problem? The 2'nds only jsut finalised on Wednesday. That is plainly ridiculous, that means nominally 3,4,5 have to be done on Monday so I can be done by Wednesday. If a large pile of very good players drop down I am going to have issues. Mean time I expect only 3 positions to be available now and the team was looking quite good this morning for a practice runout.

I have decided not to coach Women's soccer despite a plea to coach a single day a week. I think it will do no-one much good and the Club has to shrink to the resources that are available. Tomorrow I may go for a Refereeing course. It will mean that during this season and future one's I will be able to pick up a few bucks pocket money when I turn up to watch a game and there is no ref allocated. At least that is my understanding!

Going to Adam's place tonight for some poker, where I'll share my groovy phonecall with them. Although it could be another month or more before I get to announce it to the wider world.

Dodgy knee, Swan Lake

I had a hell of a weekend. It began on Thursday night at Ballet. The previous week of ballet had been my best lesson yet and I was really happy. This time there was a substitute teached who did a different warm up, short and dynamic, not long and static. Normally I don't think it would be a problem, but I don't think it helped my knee and what came later. We did lots of pliet's and points with straight leg and somewhere along the way I looked down at my leg to see if my alignment was correct... and I had a second knee cap :|
Needless to say I was pretty freaked out. In actual fact it was a large solid bump extending directly to the outside side of my knee joint from the area that is usually flat. There was also zero pain which compounded my confusion. I took it easy for the last 20 mins of class then spent a few hours at the hospital waiting to see the after hours doctor. Unfortunately for me, him and his lackey student didn't know what it was. This is becoming a trend because the GP I saw today wasn't certain either although he tentatively concurred that my self diagnosis of a cyst might be correct. At any rate it went down over the weekend although it is still there in reduced profile.
Friday began very, very early... Waking at 5am to be at the airport by 6am for a 6:40 flight to Melbourne. Fortunately it was a pretty good day once it got going. The weather was great, I was lookin sharp in suit, and had a divine dim sum lunch with the Melb. grads and their grad buddies. Flew out to get back to Canberra by 6pm, which meant I could bill for the maximum 11 & 1/2 hour day! :D Hello flextime! Also got a phone call during a meeting that I didn't follow up... Got back to Canb. and had dinner with Steph at Noble Palace in Woden and watched Music and Lyrics which was quite hilarious.
Saturday didn't start quite as early and I started a little bit later than that. After hastily packing I got to soccer trial games 40 minutes late. Fortunately I didn't miss anything as turn out was very poor. Had a light jog although I was still very worried about the knee but it didn't react adversely. After soccer drove to Sydney, dumped our stuff at Amy's, got changed (wore my Marcs embroidered short sleeve with black jacket and jeans), then had a japanese dinner before attending Swan Lake. Swan Lake was wonderful. I was confused by the story in the second half and as I haven't seen much Ballet I didn't know what to expect. Watching it was quite difficult as often many dancers are moving simultaneously and can be an overload. The Swan was awesome. And when the swans were together they were very startling too. My favorite movement was when the Prince and the Swan dance together alone, partly it allowed me to focus on the individuals and the techinique, and of course they were the best dancers. After Swan Lake we hit up a lounge bar even though we were a bit tired, but eventualyl found a nice place, the Bank Hotel, and had a few drinks and a dance. It was good to have a proper drink after several weeks of abstaining because of having to follow it up with sport or driving.
Sunday, I woke up late. Had a yummy japanese breakfast, saw Steph off to Julian Singh for Sashas wedding, then went shopping. Didn't find anything to buy though, a few cheap pants I wasn't convinced on, a cheap esprit bag which would have replaced my country road satchel, and a beautiful Marcs suit (but too similar to my Geoffrey Beene pinstripe and no pants in size). Went home after shops shut and vegged out on pizza and coke and watched The Queen on dodgy pirated dvd. Then I tried in vain to get an audio feed through the net to listen to the epic Chelsea v Tottenham F.A. Cup Quarter final, only to endure constant frustration until eventually the notebook's batteries gave out with 5 minutes to go!
Finally got in the car to drive home on Monday morning and drove home. On the way I received a particularly interesting phone call. Finally it was Steph's bday and had dinner at her place where I crashed from exhaustion.

ballet, football, work, car

So Ballet totally rocks. I am really enjoying it. It is just the right amount of physical and technical difficulty I was hoping for. Next weekend I'll be going to Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake in Sydney. And I have tickets this time so no booked out drama!

Men's and Women's football pre-season started this week. I am geared up for a successful men's preseason and hope to get into training and preseason games as soon as possible. Although at the moment the quality of new applicants is quite low but I'm told there is a host of players trying for 5'ths so hopefully I will be seeing the unsuccessful ones drop down quite soon. I forgot how much I enjoy coaching women's football. With the guys, I am much more focussed on achieving goals and try and maintain that focus and intensity through the season. Whereas when I am coaching the girls I can have more fun and am concentrating more on development then going home with a trophy at the end of the year. Maybe when I coach women's again I will coach a lower grade team, 3'rds or 4'ths.

Work is great. I am really enjoying it. I have a good boss who involves me a lot and the previous year's grads and cadets are all very friendly and helpful. And the work itself is making good use of my economics degree, and at the moment I am allowed alot of scope to let my mind roam over all the different areas of work the organisation covers. It will be a shame to leave for those reasons.

I am quite busy these days, or rather my hours are occupied. I wake, go to work, usually stay quite late, unless I am going to soccer or ballet, and if not I am still full of energy so I visit someone and/or watch a movie. I haven't played any video games in ages!

So I was about to splash out on a Smart Roadster this week. I agonised over whether or not to get it, and eventually decided to go for it and put Robbie in charge of negotating for it. But it appears the bird had flown the coup. But maybe if I get a promotion I will reward myself with some sweet wheels. Shopping in general is fun too. It didn't take me long to spend my first pay cheque - ballet tickets, 2 mega powerboards, shirt + vest, and a heap of little things. Now for the next pay day...