Schack Christmas news 2013

The family's tenuous relationship with the law continued and a pattern of harassment emerged as usual. Helen and William emerged seemingly unscathed (at least there was nothing on facebook to suggest otherwise). Hannah did her best to refute media reports that  Reservoir is Melbourne's "most burgled suburb", but to no avail. A petrol station in Inverleigh lodged a police report of  a "drive off" involving  a car registered in Rebecca's name, and Michael was delivered a summons one Sunday morning regarding an unsettled motor vehicle insurance matter. The Arizona State Patrol Officers who consented to a photo shoot with Michael at the Grand Canyon had  obviously not updated their  interpol data. .

Local health services expressed some enthusiasm in using Michael as a case study for research into mental deterioration  in old age after he was observed attempting to get into a stranger's car outside a Port Fairy pizza shop located several hundred meters from the actual pizza shop where his car was. Of further interest was his  success in bonding a ceramic spoon to a laminate benchtop during a failed super glue repair attempt. What really attracted attention, though,  was the unintended decimation of two  lawn mowers and other assorted garage equipment when he set an unmanned vehicle in motion during a botched "jump start" operation. The $5000 repair cost is still being considered by the  insurance company.

Helen entertained all of us once again with her creative use of the English language and amazed us with her ability to communicate with other humans so well. She gave us a "thumbs up"  when others might have given us a "heads up", took us to Highton instead of Highett, noted a song was a "good and oldie", reminded us of the movie "Breakneck mountain" and the TV show "Redwood now", commented on the unusual dress of some "Hamish people", thought a shakey construction looked a bit "whimsey", and noted she was attracted to  a folk rock band from upstate New York called the "Fellatio Brothers".

Despite weather statistics indicating that rain fell on 14 days in July Dan and Hannah reported a dry July -- a month that seemed longer than 31 days.

Rebecca had an unbelievable turn of luck when she won a $100 in the Christmas raffle - no doubt a welcome contribution to the Centrelink tax avoidance issue she had become embroiled in.

False rumours abounded about a Balmy Army hit contract on William following his use of the phrase "before you could say Botham is a twat"  as a synonym for "surprisingly quickly" in his "Sporting Religion" blog. The blog may well have contributed to psychological studies concluding that sport has many of the same effects on spectators as religion does [Barber, 2012].  Daniel Wann a leading sport psychologist at Murray State University noted "The similarities between sport fandom and organized religion are striking. Consider the vocabulary associated with both: faith, devotion, worship, ritual, dedication, sacrifice, commitment, spirit, prayer, suffering, festival, and celebration." There were no reports of any entry by Will in the Meredith Music Festival nude race, and he was photographed fully clothed.