My eventful day.

Oh, how I do love bruises. Today I went over to Port Pirie with a few friends for a birthday party for Caleb. The party was Paintballing! It was quite warm, and I was ridiculously sweaty inside my face mask, but it was awesome. As you can see, I did manage to acquire a few bruises. I've also got one under my other armpit, and down on my lower back, as well as a funny mark on top of my head, where I was struck few glancing blows.

My day was made a bit frustrating, because I twisted my ankle last night as I was bringing Natalie in from the car. We'd had a late night 'cos Debbie had organised a farewell party for Matthew and Sharina Morton, friends of ours who live round the corner. Thursday night our sleep was interrupted on a regular basis by a vomiting Calvin. Then Debbie got up at 5am so she'd be able to finish a video for the party - I think it was 11ish when she got home after packing up the church. Anyway, my ankle is still really sore, and I've been limping around all day - not an ideal situation when you've got people shooting little pellets of pain at you.

Given the difficulty I've been having walking, I was quite surprised at how little I was shot. The bruises you see in the picture (and all of my other bruises, with the exception of the head wound I mentioned) were obtained in the very last firefight. You see, I'd managed to be on the winning side of most of the battles, making a contribution to the very end. (The way it works, is that once a paintball bursts on you, you're out.) But at the end of the day everyone who still had paintballs left had a big all-in "last one standing" battle, and the rules went out the window - while you had paintballs, you could keep shooting other people. It was great fun, going all Rambo on everyone, and running round corners, and into rooms in the face of an onslaught of fire, getting hit, standing ground and returning fire at close range. Awesome fun, and if it wasn't for that, I would have come home without a single bruise, which would have been disappointing, to be frank. (The cluster of bruises you see in the photo were actually put there by one of the judges, who standing on the sidelines as I fired my empty weapon at a callow youth who was cowering in a corner.) Anyway, I WANNA DO IT AGAIN!! Port Pirie is kind of central. How does April work for everyone?

And THEN, on the WAY HOME, the other carfull of guys pulled over in front of us, and one of them hopped out and ran over to us and said "Stuart, Debbie's been taken to hospital in an ambulance." But for that story, you'll need to wander over to the Cozens Blog.