Cute

While I was driving home tonight at around 11:45pm I got stopped at the lights near the TAFE. I had to stop because there was a man crossing the road with his dog and the dog had a little coat on and a flashing red bike light on his back so he didn't get driven over. It was very cute.

Below is an artist's impression of what the dog kinda looked like:

Day and Night

Today I had to teach a year 3 scripture class because my year 6 class are in Canberra. I went to the office and asked where my class room was and wandered down. I found a year 3 classroom about where I thought it should be and went in. The teacher said "Are you the Scripture Teacher today?"

"I guess so" I said. And sat down and began teaching the class. Unfortunately, the door opened about 5 minutes in and there was the real scripture teacher. I'd found the wrong year 3 class. But the real teacher, being a nice lady, decided to go and teach the class I was meant to be teaching. So everything was fine in the end.

Tonight I went out with the young adults of my church. First I drove the youth leaders into Darling Harbour in my van and we went to Starbucks for our Leader's Meeting. That was nice. Leader's meetings in Starbucks feels much more festive.

Once we had done our official business we trudged down to King St Wharf to go to Wagamama (it's a Japanese restaurant with a name that I thought was racist) with the other young adults. And we sat around and ate and talked and laughed. We ended the night at the James Squire Brewhouse. Of course this whole thing isn't really all that remarkable, but I thought I blog it anyway, for memories sake.

Vould You Like a Free 'Oliday

A while ago in a sermon I told the story about how I got called up that week by a company who was offering me a free holiday and faboulous prizes. Except I wasn't earning enough money to qualify. And I thought it was pretty funny.

Well since then I've been offered a free holiday and faboulous prizes at least three times and I'm still not eligable. I have to earn at least $45,000 a year and I don't. Today the phone woman asked me if I knew about her company, I said "Yes", and she said "Oh good" and proceeded to give me the same speil I've heard everytime I've made the mistake of not knowing about their company.

Oh well, at least they keep putting me in the draw to win thousands of dollars.

"Faith is the bird that knows the dawn and sings while it is still dark." - Unknown

Third Time Unlucky

So it's Podcast time again. One day early because Howie has to go to Tasmainia tomorrow to play with the Tasmainians.

Get the Podcast Here

Our usual disclaimer applies. We know it's not that good. The best way to solve boredom problems is to press stop, or fast forward. I figure the more appologetic we are for our late night silliness, the less people will think the podcast is dodgy. I'm not sure that works though.

Anyway enjoy. And if you have iTunes or iPodder or something you can suscribe to the feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/howieshalfpipe

Yoi Hoi!

I Climbed a Tree Today

I haven't climbed a tree in years. But today Tim decided he wanted to climb a tree, so I joined him. It was good fun. Tim got higher up than me. I should climb more trees.



We played touch footy at youth group and someone scratched me on the arm. That's twice in a row at a games time that someone has drawn blood from me. How cool. But the game was exciting. We won 1-1. Of course some people would call that a tie, but in Christian sports, everyone's a winner.

Church was good too. It was great to see lots of people dancing at the end. I wanted to take a photo but I couldn't work out if that was good thing to be doing. It did look cool though, and it was great to see people so excited about God.

I got a hole in the pocket of my jeans today too. Chances are I'll now loose my keys.

I went bowling tonight. I won. I got 132 points. I'm so the best. I'm going to put that on my resume:

Achievements: Once got 132 points in ten-pin bowling

Early on Saturday morning is not a real nice time to get up. We got up early today to go to Martin's breakfast in the city. It was a difficult thing to do. But I like Martin. I think he's worth getting up for, so I'm pleased I did it.

Mouthing Off

Helen told me yesterday that she had noticed that I have been getting ruder. She said that I'm less likely to censor the things that I say. Which is interesting because I'd been thinking about that myself. Ever since I read James 3 a few months ago, I've been aware that I need to get better at not saying every stupid thing that comes to my brain. The fact that Helen noticed that I've been getting worse, months after I started thinking about it, doesn't seem like a good sign.

At least now I have more motivation to get better. I'm going to try and say less. I hear it's your frontal lobe that works as your censor. I'm going to try and rebuild that "7 millisecond broadcast delay" in my brain.

And maybe I won't be as rude in the future.

Except when it's really funny.

Happy.

What a nice looking word.

Podcast

This week's podcast is here and it's stupider than last week.

It's mainly stupid toilet humour and nudity jokes. Mothers wouldn't approve. And I say "turd", "friggin" and "balls", oops. They just slipped out.

Remember where to send complaints.

Here she is.

Lost Weight

I dropped my food yesterday.

I had just been at the lovely local take-away buying lunch. As I was walking out I noticed that, around the corner, there was a guy looking mournfully at some food on the ground that he must have dropped. His friend was standing near by laughing at him. As I walked around the corner, out of my plastic bag of lunch flew my little bag of two potato scallops. They hit the ground and slid across the tiles. I stared mournfully at them.

The guy who was laughing at his friend saw my scallops and started laughing at me too. I tried to put on a cheerful face, but scallops are so nice. It was probably pretty funny though.

Narcissistic Baby

I realised the other day that the photos I stick on my blog most often are of me. This led me to think that people may think that I love myself (which I do, but I pretend to a bit more self-effacing). Almost all the photos of me on my blog are of me being an idiot though. So people probably just think I'm a bit of a nut-case (which I may be).

For everyone's information I airbrushed out a pimple in the middle of my forehead on the below picture, just to see if I could. If you want to see the pimple, it's on the photo of me and my fat head lower down.

Make Poverty History Dude!

Poor Day

So today I did a little more to be making poverty history.

I went to the rally in Darling Harbour where some people gathered to wear white, look at displays and talk about Millennium Development Goals. I was with Rob and some guys from the youth group. It was fun. I really like the positive vibe this whole campaign has. It's not one of hate and anger. It's about positive challenge to our governments to do something.

I'd like to have photos, but my job today was to be taking photos for other people. I called myself the official Tear Australia photographer, because it sounds impressive if you're the photographer for an international aid organisation. But I think I may have just been Ben's photographer seeing as he handed me his camera and told me to take some photos, but not to fill it up because he wanted some space left for his kid's second birthday party this afternoon.

Yesterday at the station one of David's friends from Save the Children came up to me and I wasn't in mood to talk to them (I'm never in the mood). He said "Hi how are you?"

To which I replied "Fine."

He said "Can you spare a minute?"

"Nope" I said and kept walking.

It was only after that I realised I was wearing my "Make Poverty History" t-shirt. I thought perhaps that may have looked a little dodgy.

My other thought while being in the City making poverty history is, what do you do with Sydney's beggars? They see all of us marching around talking about poverty, but we didn't seem to do anything for them.

A drunk guy came up to me today while in Darling Harbour (I was wearing the t-shirt again). He said "Have you got forty cents?"

I said "Probably" and pulled out my wallet.

He said "I need some money to buy a beer"

I laughed and said "You want to buy a beer?" He told me he did. I admired his honesty. He then had a conversation with me about poverty and he got angry at me for not listening. But in the end he decided he liked me again. I never gave him the 40 cents.

On the station I did give a guy a dollar, which began a short conversation between Rob and I about the ethics of giving to people who seem quite likely not to spend your money on what they tell you it's for (usually a ticket to Newcastle or food for the pregnant girlfriend, I've found). I haven't quite figured it out yet but I think it's better to give and not judge because if I needed money I hope that people would give it to me. And Jesus' words often come to me, I just haven't figured out how to best apply them in this context.

Letterman

It's been such a long time to be awake. I got up at 5am this morning. I was in Martin Place at 7am. I was there to hold up a letter or two with some other social justice hippy types in-front of the Sunrise set on Channel 7. The letters spelt "Make Poverty History". I was the O in "History".

When we first arrived I had to put on a "Make Poverty History" shirt. The woman in charge gave me one which looked a little small. I looked at it and it seemed like a girl's shirt, but I didn't want to say anything in case I was a being rude, or fashion ignorant. I put the shirt on and asked if it looked funny, Rach and some other women I hadn't met before said it looked fine. It felt funny though. I tried a different shirt which still felt just as funny and just as feminine.

Then another MPH guy rode up and looked at me. I asked him if I looked funny. He said I looked fine except that I was wearing a girl's shirt. My suspicions were confirmed. Oh dear. I quickly asked if there were any guy's shirts, feeling rather stupid.

Now it may not seem like a big deal putting on a girl's t-shirt. But I am a little conscious that when I meet a bunch of new people I don't want their first impression to be of me putting on women's clothing. I got a man's shirt in the end and felt much better.

When 18 of us all had our letters we had to run around Martin Place, do dances, wave the letters about, do aerobics routines. It was all very taxing on my comfort zones. I will never be a dancer. I couldn't even kick my legs right.

We got to see Evermore play some music (because they happened to be playing there this morning) and the Sunrise people filmed the letters and the weather man gave us a plug.

We did a few photo shoots after that.

I caught the train home with a girl who thought I was 18. That was a nice change from people thinking I'm at least 2 years older than I am.

The rest of the day was work, small group and a movie and pizza night with Mil, Martin and Anmol. Now I'm feeling rather stuffed.

King

I just listened to an original recording of Martin Luther King, Jr's I have a Dream speech.

Ooo, goose bumps.

When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
"Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" - Martin Luther King, Jr

Spring

Today was the first day I felt Spring. The sun was out, that spring smell was in the air. It's the smell that makes me say "Mmm. It's Black Stump weather". And it's the smell of endless possibilities. I got nervous today because I smelt Spring. Spring makes me feel like anything could happen. It's not a conscious knowledge of what, but this subconscious feeling that something is in the air, something good. Life will be good.

Of course, this is just a feeling and Spring is usually about as new as Winter and as happy as Summer. But neither of them smell like newness, neither of them smell like happy, nervous anticipation. So in Spring I revel in my subconscious, just in-case it lives up to its odour.

What Howard would do if he were God

"I say to my fellow Australians, if there were a way that I could bring down the price of petrol, I would move heaven and earth to do so."
John Howard - 8th September 2005

Good thing he's got his priorities right.

From here

Bono knows Best

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it - U2

Popey

Yesterday I decided that I would like to get ordained as an Anglican minister, move to Rome and become the Anglican Bishop of Rome. Then when people ask what I do for a living I could say "I'm the Bishop of Rome" and they'll think I'm the Pope, but I'm not really. I'm sure it'd be a great way to impress people at parties. I could even wear my big hat and robes around the place just to give me that extra papal feel.