Day 46, Level 1: Ziggy follow-up, vege dinner, old Omaha house, and blame

Well as a follow-up to Ziggy's race yesterday - turns out the jockey of the horse who shunted him badly got a 7-day suspension for careless riding. Good job, although it should have been more as it was a poor and dangerous piece of riding. Frustratingly, Opie Bosson (arguably NZ's top jock) is just a little untouchable and gets away with what others would simply not. It's neither right nor fair - but it's not uncommon - in life in general, not just racing. 

Take a look at the footage of the race (link below), and you'll see the shambles ... look for the horse jumping from the widest gate with yellow sleeves and red cap - that's Saintly Way (aka Ziggy). Jockey settles him back, that's all good and about all you can do from his wide draw. He's making ground but gets a bump halfway through the race - can't see it on the footage but the stipes picked it up. That bump pushes him way wide so jockey opts to go forward - sooner than he'd like but best of a bad situation. Being 5 wide is never going to work, especially in a short sprint race like this one. 

As they run for home, with Ziggy looking good, Opie moves his horse carelessly and arrogantly outward and it impacts another horse (not sure how that rider stayed on board) and Ziggy who was airborne sideways. Dreadful - and desperate - riding from Opie.  Shocking, to be quite frank. Ziggy did awesome in the great scheme of all that. His ability is so much better than his form shows - next time he might be paying even more than the $50 he was paying yesterday. The faithful may well be rewarded ... we shall wait and see. The hard part will be finding the right race and then making the field. Big challenge.

https://loveracing.nz/RaceInfo/49603/6/Race-Detail.aspx

Brett finished painting the wall this morning, and I did some housework. Much as I love paint and painting, I'd rather clean bathrooms, do washing and clean out the fridge than stain a large and long wooden retaining wall! Which is what I did today.

And then I drove to Omaha around 4pm. It's a month since I was here and it was so nice to unpack and settle in. There's a simplicity to things here. The weather was perfect so I opened up all the doors and let heaven in. Contemplated a beach walk but ended up doing some work, chatting to a few people, and then started on dinner. 

On my drive north I'd decided I would do a sort of vegetable mornay with Yorkshire puds for dinner. Cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, carrots, cabbage, pumpkin, garlic - I cooked them all up, either roasted or sizzled. Made a cheese sauce. Made Yorkshire puds. Put it all together and ... yum. 

After my mega meat meal of steak last night I thought tonight warranted vegetables only! 

I found this photo below of our Omaha house in the 1970s/80s. The curtains are closed (locked up upon leaving I guess) and there are some bushes and shrubs that haven't been there in decades. The deck railing is an interesting thing - it was like this until our kids came along - like, a small kid could walk right off that deck! No way were we leaving it a possibility that our kids might toddle off the edge so Brett and I commissioned a builder to add some horizontal railings which meant they couldn't. It was frowned upon at the time as ruining the look of the place! Excuse me!? 

Egad, back in the days when many young kids were at our house, there was no safety net whatsoever. It is quite shocking that this step-off-the-deck-if-you're-a-small-person situation was even allowed to be built. And it looks ugly. 

It looked so much better once the horizontal boards were in place (1994) to keep kids safe.  Now we have a much larger and even safer deck!
Today it's the same footprint, similar look/feel - but totally modernised inside and out. 

I'll take some "now" photos and post them tomorrow. 

Meanwhile, I keep seeing ads for the new movie Made In Italy. Everything about this movie annoys me for some reason.  It has "naf" written all over it. 

Shame, as I really like Liam Neeson as an actor, I love Tuscany and love the restoration of old homes. I can certainly relate to the Italian lifestyle, having visited the country many times, and with many connections past and present.

But the whole premise of this movie seems rather twee and annoying. I think I would find it hideously irritating to pay to go watch it at a cinema. Much as I would love to watch an old Tuscan villa be restored, with a backdrop of family reconnection, everything about this trailer fills me with a great big sigh. Actually, having seen the trailer about 13 times, I think I've almost seen the whole movie anyway!

SHARE-NOTE OF THE DAY:
Blame ...

Some people love to blame everyone else for what goes wrong ... especially those who make the most mistakes!