Could be worse, could be an Ocean Islander

 Up early and attempting to work. It’s back to the New Zealand competition entries, so I am having to find new and creative ways of (a) maintaining my levels of interest and (b) telling the competitors they are not meeting the requirements. Some of these are major global brands and don’t take kindly to this. The key is to tell them they almost meet the requirements and if they re-presented their application using different examples and an alternative approach then there is a chance they would be on the right track.
 
Got the mid-morning call telling us Ottawacker Jr. had been “kidnapped” again and would we mind if he went mini-putting in Kanata this morning and then stayed on for lunch? He has a knack for ingratiating himself that will either serve him really, really well or really, really badly.
 
Caught up on a few blips and then went for lunch with D, who wasn’t in the best frame of mind. He’d just got back from a family vacation to Europe (his son works in Amsterdam, and they had spent time there, in Paris, and then a 12-day stay in Barcelona and Cordoba revisiting his old haunts) and had come back to the current political mess and some medical issues. None of us is 20 any more. In my case, thank God. I was a complete mess when I was 20.
 
But lunch was very pleasant and when Ottawacker Jr. finally returned, we had a couple of hours to chat and prepare him for his goalkeeper training in the evening. Rather less good was the incipient cough he seems to have developed. We’re hoping for allergies…
 
Unsurprisingly, the rain arrived for goalkeeper training, so I stayed close by in case it developed into thunder and lightning and things got cancelled; then I came home, found Mrs. Ottawacker in a supine Escape to the Country-induced coma, cooked us some homemade burgers as a late dinner, and stayed up to watch an episode of Martin Clunes’ Pacific Island odyssey, part of which made me realize the British colonial impact is still far reaching and still inexcusable. (This episode involved the forced relocation of all of the Ocean Island’s inhabitants to a Fijian island (Rabi) some 1,000km away, while a British government supported mining company destroyed the island in search of phosphate. Makes you proud…)