This morning I went to the pancake breakfast. That was fun. I like pancakes. I think I should make more. I only spent a bit of time there before having to go to work for a meeting. When that finished I promptly came back home and slept for an hour and a half.
I went to the shops when I woke up and sent a barrage of sms to many different people as I walked. I had a conversation with some "random" who sent me a message saying "Who is this?". We tried to work out how they had my number but to no success. In the end we wished each other a good day and got on with our lives. I don't know who they are. I think Ben might have sent an sms from my phone this morning to a wrong number.
At the shops I brought Louise a present for tonight's dinner do. And I bought myself some lunch. Now I think I'll go eat my lunch and watch the "The Making of The Two Towers". Cool.
I think I need to catch up.
I had a 4 hour holiday on Thursday night to Manly. That was fun. No stress for a few hours. Good stuff.
Yesterday I woke up bright an early at 5:50am for scripture seminars. I picked up Tanya and Mike, and we headed off to the school. The school was very nice to us and the kids were really well behaved. It's good fun doing them. We got to tell the gospel, although not as conventionally as most scripture seminars. Sarah spoke about her time in Romania and told lots of good stories. All the kids listened. We prepared candles to be given out for Christmas presents in Kings Cross. 'Twas very nice. Everyone got into it. I never got to lead a small group, I never planned it that way but it never happened. The Vice Principal introduced me to years 7 and 8 as "Mr French". That was funny, but then I had to tell them all to call me Tom and I felt a little bad destroying all his hardwork of telling people my name. By year 9 I asked to be called Tom.
Anys it was good to talk about Jesus to people who don't know him. That's good fun.
It was very wet yesterday and I got lots of water in the bottom of my shoes.
Mike and I ate lunch together at the little shopping centre. Then headed back to the school for the lunch time group which was pretty crazy. They all were noisy and talked a lot. Oh well, had a bit of a laugh.
Staff meeting. I tried to stay wake and my feet were freezing the whole time. I drove home when it finished to put on some long pants, put on some dry socks, and find some dry shoes. Sadly the only shoes I had were my sandals. So I wore my socks and sandals back to work and looked terrible. Many people thought it was quote funny. Rob thought it was very funny, he said it made his day and he had a pretty bad day so my feet must have looked pretty bad. I ran youth group in my socks, feeling perhaps wearing my sandals would get me laughed at. It did.
I just got a hair cut. How they freak me out.
I spent a lot more money. I bought Christmas presents. I don't think I have ever in my entire life bought Chirstmas presents this early. I figured though that it was best to buy them now while I have to money or everyone may end up getting paper mache creations or something.
Yesterday I also got to go to one of the local primary schools and do a Christmas talk. I had to do it twice because they couldn't fit the whole school into the library together. The infants came first and they were great. Really well behaved, laughed at all my jokes. I'm not sure if they got the point, but they had fun. I told them I was very excited to be at their Easter assembly and they all shouted back that it was Christmas. Exactly how I'd planned.
The primary kids on the other hand when I asked them if it was Easter or Christmas, they all shouted "Easter!" which then made it difficult for me to continue with the talk as I actually didn't have an Easter talk planned, I was just using that to warm up the kids. Luckily I was saved when the MC informed me that it actually was Christmas and I could continue with the talk.
After the assemblies they had a massive morning tea. Full of cakes and pies and sandwiches and other things. It was amazing. It was a table laden with good food. So I stood around and ate that and made small talk for a while. That was pleasant but I had to leave because I had a meeting with Helen and Steve to attend. I'm happy I did leave, because in the playground I got mobbed by kids. It was great. They all wanted to come and talk to me and see what was in my box and look at the toys I brought along for the talk (an Easter bunny and baby doll). I got to talk to them about school and Christmas, and names. It was good fun. I love hanging out with kids. I only got to spend about 5 minutes in the play ground because the bell went. But I'm happy I got do that.
Yesterday I went to city and spent a lot of money on tickets to Return of the King. That was fun. It's a good feeling knowing you have your tickets. I'm very excited. Yayness.
What's sad though is that most of the world gets to see it on 17th December. We, for some reason, are being snubbed. Oh well, absence makes the heart grow fonder, we Australians will like it more, except for perhaps those in Italy who only get to see it on 22nd January.
I forgot to write about Monday night. Not that it's important but one figures it's worth doing.
Ryan and I were planning on going out to dinner and then watching a movie. But we decided to go see what was on first and then go find some food. Once we did that though we discovered that S.W.A.T. was the only movie on at a good time that we wanted to see. And it was on in about 10 minutes. So we headed off to Coles, bought some Pringles and Coke and went and saw the film.
It started off well. I always like the idea of films about people with cool, guns and body armour. Especially teams of them. And helicopters, and Police. It was all very cool. But after the start it all went down hill. It was the same dull action movie that most are. It could have been good. There were good ideas in it. The $100 million to free the prisoner was a good idea. But they didn't play that to it's full potential. And it had too much cheesy action movie humour, and some really terrible scripting.
If, though, they got Michael Mann to do it, and got him to run over the screenplay that would have been cool. Heat was a damn good film. Having S.W.A.T. made like that film would have kicked serious butt. But alas, no.
After the film it was back to Coles to buy some dinner. I discovered myself dancing in the frozen food isle while no one was watching. We came home and ate Vegipastys and wedges. We watched Black Hawk Down on Foxtel. My second movie on Foxtel, my second night in a row. But it was good movie. Better than what we watched at the cinema. It was a pleasant night. Good fun.
One year ago today I did my first regular blog post. At that stage I had now idea what I getting into. But it's been good. I've enjoyed my blogging experience. Happy Birthday to my blog.
I don't have many regrets in my life, but I've got plenty of time to work on that.
Having done the whole Two Towers: Extended Edition, I'm suitably impressed. Was very cool. I discovered that Aragorn is 87 years old. I found that a little distressing.
Still, is wonderful. I can't wait to watch the "Making of" stuff.
Ryan and I had a conversation about who was better Arwen or Eowyn, but I think I find the whole Aragorn or Legolas discussion much more interesting.
I just finished disk one of The Two Towers: Extended Edition. Ooooohh my goodness!
Sooo good.
Now it's time for disk 2!
Blogspot is down at the moment but I'll get this post done anyway.
Today was very long. I had a 7 3/4 hour meeting with Helen about youth ministry next year. It wasn't a bad meeting, but I would say the longest one I've ever been to. I'd been having a really bad lead up to the meeting. It was making me really scared. Having to make decisions and plan and stuff like that. Making choices that will affect the lives of many other people. It was stressing me out. Sunday night I sat in church and felt terrible. I thought, "This is just beyond me. You can leave me out of this. I don't want to make any decisions. I don't want any responsibility". But today has been fine. God's been looking after me and it wasn't as stressful as it could have been.
I went to community dinner tonight. I managed to get a large chuck of Tim Tam stuck up my nasal passage at the back of my throat. Very uncomfortable, but quite spectacular to bring up again for the various diners to inspect the size of my unwanted secretion.
We headed off to Woolies afterwards too. I had to get wrapping paper and a ribbon for this Christmas Assembly which I'm doing tomorrow (I haven't written my talk properly yet). While David and I were in the middle of a conversation about how God speaks to people, David noticed a double John Grisham book for $7.95, he picked it up and showed me, then put it back on the shelf. I thought "Ooo, that's tempting". I stood there for a little while wondering whether I should get it or not, when it fell off the shelf. I declared this to be a sign from God, and picked up to book for later purchasing.
At the checkout, the woman looked at the price sticker on the back of the book (I didn't know Woolies still had price stickers), it said $6.95. She scanned it and it came up as $7.95. She gave me a funny look and I remembered that there's some deal where if it scans higher than it is marked you get it cheaper or something. I mentioned this to her in some vague, hazy question, and she replied with "Yeah, I'll sort that out in a tick". She scanned the rest of my items and told me I would get the book for free. How exciting. I turned to David and said "I told you it was a sign from God."
I went into the city today because I had to figure out my vision for youth ministry and I wanted to do it in conducive environs of Hyde Park. It was a nice place. When I arrived at the park there was an old lady feeding pigeons under my favorite tree. There were hundreds of pigeons all over her. There was also two gay men (well at least they were giving off that air) in business clothes chasing each other around the park, tackling each other, rolling around on the grass together, and generally having a good old flirt. They looked like they were in year seven. They looked very cute. I've never found gay men cute before but I think it was the clothes that did it for me.
When it started raining and getting my paper wet I covered my paper and slept till the rain went away.
I walked back to the station via the convenience store and bought myself a packet of Nacho Cheese Doritos and a bottle of Coke.
This is the road trip music of Jo and I while in NZ:
South
Norah Jones - Come Away with Me
Third Day - Offerings
Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind
Delirious? - Deeper - Disk 1
Delirious? - Deeper - Disk 2
Matchbox 20 - More Than You Think You Are
Paul Colman Trio - PC3 Live Electric
In Wellington
U2 - Pop
John Mayer - Room for Squares New from the Warehouse
North
Ani di Franco - Living in Clip - Disk 1
Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals - Live From Mars - Disk 2
U2 - The Joshua Tree New from the Warehouse
Michael Franti - Stay Human
Sons of Korah - Redemption Songs
Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen
U2 - Elevation Tour 2001 - Live from Boston
My mother said the other day that Bryce Courtney is like the Steven Spielberg of novels. Perhaps not in success, but in style. I agree I think. He goes a bit sappy at times, and feels a little contrived. But I don't mind too much. It gets a little annoying at times, but over all I can cope.
But I love Steven Spielberg, for precisely those reasons. There's very little subtlety with that bloke. And there's all these wonderful shots of sunsets and the like. How cool is Empire of the Sun? The book was great, and the film, although not really a good adaption of the book, was a wonderful example of why I love Spielberg. Wahoo.
Tonight I'm going out to dinner with Ryan. I've been getting excited about this for weeks. I can't wait.
I watched The One. It was pretty poor.
Now I'm going to go to bed and finish my book. I have about 6 pages to go. How exciting. I love reading.
