This shows why you should always pick up your Hornsby and Upper North Shore Advocate off your driveway quickly. After 5 weeks it becomes somewhat unreadable.

The other thing that happened at work was that I noticed that all the cleaners were wearing pants, nice shirts and waistcoats (or should they be called wastecoats, heh heh). I mentioned this to one of the other ushers and he agreed that the cleaners looked good. Better than us in fact. I want to wear a waistcoat.

When one of the cleaners walked past we told him he looked good in his fancy clothes.

I said "You're looking better than us, we should swap jobs."

As soon as I'd said it I felt bad because I realised that I was implying that because we were ushers we should look better than the cleaners. I don't really think there should be class distinctions between jobs, especially in the same work place.

So I tried to make up for my rudeness by telling the guy that he looked good. I hope he wasn't too offended.

I hope we ushers get waistcoats.

I worked yesterday ushering at a conference. It was a conference for sales people of a big brand, pyramid scheme. It wasn't all that interesting. Most of the talk was about how if you do the right thing in the company you can retire within a few years.

There was one person telling people how to be good at sales. He said most people were bad because they were worried about what other people thought of them. Like if I push my crappy product on you, you'll probably think I'm a tool. He didn't put it quite like that, but that was the implication. In fact the speakers often mentioned the fact that people tend to dislike the sales people of this brand. It was a source of pride that people dislike them. Kinda like when Christians get together and say "The world will hate us, but we have the truth. Rah rah rah!"

Anyway, the speaker was saying, to be a good sales person you have to not worry about what people think of you. People don't think about you as much as you think they do. He said "I want you to ask yourself, how many times today have you thought about your spouse? Your children? Your best friend? Your friends? Your neighbours? Your acquaintances? Not once. You haven't thought about them at all, because you're too busy thinking about yourself. And in fact they haven't thought about you because they're too busy thinking about themselves. People are essentially selfish. It's alright that's just how we are."

His application for this enlightening piece of information was that you should be as brash as you want in selling stuff, because no-body is thinking about you, so don't worry about what people think of you.

It was rather inspiring stuff.

If you look to the left you'll notice that this is post 250 of 2009. That's 9 more posts than were done in the whole of 2008. This will be the first full year of blogging where my number of posts has increased from the year before. That's what's underemployment will do for you I say.

So the old choking up exited the cinema and happened live on stage in front of a couple of hundred people last night.

I was at Impact, the final concert for Breakthru' Artz as they wrap up 10 years of ministry. Helen asked be to do the task of speaking for two minutes about the year 2005 and its significance for Breakthru' Artz. I think I ended by saying something like, "I think the greatest miracle for Breakthru' Artz is that God used it to bring people to Jesus. Thanks Helen." And it was somewhere in that last bit that I choked up and felt like I was about to cry. Right there, with the spot light on my face, and hundreds of people looking at me. I had no idea it was about to happen. I hadn't be feeling emotional about things at all and then suddenly there I was choking up like a mother and son reunion scene in a Hollywood film.

I couldn't work out if I was getting emotional about Breakthru ending or about people becoming Christians. I wasn't sure if it was a happy sad or a sad sad. Either way is fine. Whatever it is I'm totally getting in touch with my emotions. Or perhaps more precisely my emotions are getting in touch with me.

I thought of a line the other day to keep up my sleeve. You know, one to use on a lady.

I thought it'd be awesome to say "Can I be your Arthur Miller?" I figured it was both cultured, self-deprecating (depending on what you think of Arthur Miller) and highly complimentary to the girl.

But then I heard this song today by Megan Washington where she used the line:

You'll be my Arthur Miller and I'll be your Marilyn Monroe.

I was a little crushed because the girl could very possibly be a Megan Washington fan and think I was just stealing the line. And if she thought that I could just as easily have used any old line. I could have said "Hey baby, that dress looks good on you, but it'd look even better on my floor (obviously after we've courted and then got engaged and then married and before you leaving your dress on the floor starts to annoy me because you never pick up your freaking clothes)" and it would have made no difference.

I guess I'll just have use it on deaf girls. I wonder how you say "Arthur Miller" in sign language.

I had my first night of Youth Group at my new church. I'm just a lowly leader. As the newest leader, I could be the lowliest. It was pretty great. I do love youth ministry, and tonight I wasn't in-charge of anything. I was just there. I wasn't a guest. Just a leader. I haven't been just a leader since 2001.

The youth group is quite different from my old one. It's a little odd wandering around not knowing what is going on. Every now and again I felt the need to be a youth minister and tell people what to do. But I have to resist. No one likes the new guy who turns up and things he runs the show.

Still it was good to be back hanging out with teenagers again. I have missed them. And at the moment, having had a nine month break and not having to be in charge, I'm feeling full of energy and totally un-jaded. Woo!

Tomorrow night I'm going to a big do for the old church. So I should see a bunch of my old youth too. That's exciting. They're pretty awesome.

I had a beer with Dicker today. We sat in a pub in the city and drank Kilkenny. Mike (Dicker) got the beers. He bought us a pint each. I drank the whole thing and didn't fall off my stool once. I was so proud of myself. Last time I had a whole pint in one go Helen had to drive us home cause I was making Dad jokes. I didn't let on how proud I was of myself though. That would be un-manly. It's poor form to show that you get mildly inebriated after just one beer.

When we got our beer Mike said it was the "milk and honey of beers". I thought that sounded rather nice, but when I drank it didn't taste at all like milk and honey. I was most disappointed even if it was good beer. It occurs to me had I wanted milk and honey I could have just asked for some milk and honey. I'm sure they could make some. I could have drunk a pint of that. Though I probably would have been in worse shape after that than the beer. "Milk was a bad choice."

I saw this poster the other night when out with the Bennetts:



Seeing as that looks like such a winner I've decided to run my own event for people with special needs. I'm going to call it:

Retardance Party
Get downs on the dance floor