This blog has moved!

Mine is Around About Here has now become Tomtime 2000, you can access it here: tomtime2000.wordpress.com.

Please update your links, your shortcuts, your drunken tattoos and anywhere else you have my blog address stored.

All the posts have been moved to the new blog. The comments have not all moved (only about 4 months at this stage), so this blog and the comments will remain here for a while. You can see the comments properly by going here.

Thanks for reading. I'll see over at the new blog, I'm already there.

I'm writing this post on Wednesday and setting it to post on Friday, because I am sure I will not see a better video this week. This is freaking fantastic!



Once again, thanks to Mark White for finding it.

In the old days of blogging, I used to come home and blog about my day because I thought it was interesting. Usually it went something like this although sometimes I got overly enthusiastic like this.

These days I tend not to talk about my day because, no one reads my blog to find out about it. But in honour of the past, just once, I'm gonna do it. This was Thursday 9th February 2012.

I woke up this morning to the sounds of Adagio for Tron, which is my wake up music. Thank you Sleep Cycle App. It's nice to wake up to if a little sad (the music not the app). I read my Bible in bed, which was bad because I kept drifting off and dreaming about Jeremiah. I guess dreaming about Jeremiah isn't too bad, but sometimes it can be hard to figure out if Jeremiah really was at your primary school with you or if you just dreamt it.

I took my time this morning because to today was late arrival day at work. I went in at around 10. The traffic was pretty nice, but I had to park a long way from the office. I had two green bags full of commentaries on the books of Mark and John to carry with me too. I felt like a biblically literate homeless person. It was difficult holding the bags safely while standing on the median strip in middle of our local busy road. I was worried a car might clip one of my bags and drag me down the street grazing my knees, ruining my shirt and dashing my brains on the road surface. It would probably be the first time someone had ever been killed by a Bible commentary. If you get killed by a Bible commentary can you call it martyrdom? It is getting killed in the cause for Christ kinda.

I arrived at work a little before 10 just in time for Bible study. It was good.

Then I spent the day working. It was solid. I sent emails, did a little talk prep, made phone calls, booked visits, printed invoices, went to the post office. Boy, it was amazing. And I didn't get distracted by Facebook or SMH once. Maybe more than once, but certainly not once.

On my way back from the post office I bought myself lunch. It was a chicken and salad roll from the Vietnamese hot bread shop. There are rumours that the pâté from the shop will make you poo excessively. I thought about trying it to see if the rumours are correct, but felt if I discovered the truth it might ruin the mystique of the shop, so I said "No pâté, thanks."

During my lunch break I read a book on church planting for my church planting tripastorate (the three pastors) meeting tonight. I also sent some non-work emails.

At 6:15 it was almost time to go home. I broke one of my rules and did a work poo. I don't really like pooing in my work place but there were very few people left in the office to smell my present's presence so I relaxed the no-work-poo embargo. I also got changed while I was there out of my business clothes into my casual clothes.

At just past 6:30pm I left work. I walked all 13km back to the car and crossed at the lights seeing as I thought trying my luck with my voluptuous commentary carrying twice in one day was a little too much.

I drove to Pastor Scott's* house via Caltex to pick up some over-priced soft drink. Just after leaving the petrol station a lady almost drove into me while turning right at some lights. She was coming from the other direction as I drove through the lights, she didn't see me and almost smashed right into my side. After that I turned the invisibility switch on my car off because it's too dangerous. Suburu's do have a lot of neat gadgets though.

I arrived at Scott's just after 7, Pastor Kaye* was already there. Scott was cooking us a barbie. He's a real man. We ate then spent three and a half hours talking about Gotham City Church (the working title for our church). It was very exciting. Tonight we talked a lot about church government and how we want the church to function. We also spent a while discussing humour in our church, which I think others thought was a bit of a tangent, I felt it was a core theological issue. I think we decided some good things; racist jokes are out, poo jokes are probably still up for debate.

Still talking concretely about what we want the church to be like (everything from theology, to people we reach, to ministries we run, to how we run a service) was very exciting. It's good to finally be getting really concrete. And it turns out we all agree on most things.

We finished our discussions and prayed then I drove home. I sent an email to some youth group parents for tomorrow and now I'm blogging.

That's my day.

Don't expect another one for these for 8 years, but at least now you know what I did today. You can finally stop wondering.


*We don't call each other Pastor, but it'll help you know who they are.

When you teach the Trinity you could use this:



Or you could use this:




Yes, I know one of them is more theologically correct than the other. But one is funnier than the other. And if Funny and Correct Theology had Facebook pages, Funny would totally have more friends, so it's obvious which is inherently more valuable.

David is in Sydney for work and he asked me if I wanted to go see a movie. Me being me, I did. So we went and saw Martha Marcy May Marlene. I only really heard good things about this movie so I was feeling optimistic. It's about a girl who manages to escape from an abusive cult and must deal with the repercussions while living with her older sister.

It's a pretty darn good film. It's smart, well written, well acted and nicely shot with interesting characters. The cult is too not outlandish, though it is is pretty extreme in the end. Having once made a cult film which was not that great, I reckon the greatness of this one fills the hole in the market for films about girls in cults that our film didn't quite manage to fill. The cult leader was charismatic, gentle, horrid and abusive. Everything you need in a good cult leader. Elizabeth Olsen did a very good job of being messed up.

What struck me about the film was that one of the great strengths of the cult was communication. They were very good at talking to their people about what was going on and controlling the conversation. Communication made the cult work. When Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) was with her family, while she was safe, their great downfall was communication. Martha's inability to speak about her experiences and her sister and brother-in-law's inability to take time to listen to her, meant that they couldn't help Martha heal or begin to understand what she was going through.

The movie did a wonderful job of not treating the audience like idiots. While David and I agreed we love having everything spelled out for us, it's nice when a film is happy not be easily package everything for the viewer, and neatly wrap everything up. The film was happy to leave things unsaid and leave the viewer in tension. Just like life I guess, full of things left unsaid, full of tension and uneasiness about the future.

Go see the film. Unless you want something fun, then you should go see Man on a Ledge it has no cults but much more action and infinitely more helicopters.

Ahhmigoodness!



Forget The Artist. This is why cinema was invented.

As many of you would have noticed, my blog is a bit borked at the moment. I have been trying hard to get it fixed and make alternative blog arrangements. This is coming along, slowly.

However, what has been interesting is the amount of stress this has caused me. I have been feeling quite agitated about the state of my blog and it's mainly because the comments look ugly now and stuff up the formatting. I didn't have the most beautiful blog in the world, but now it looks like Geocities deformed cousin. I kinda feel like I would if I woke up in the morning with poo on my face but I couldn't get it off, and no one else was helping me do it.

It's pretty amazing to me how concerned I am with the image I portray on my blog. Why should I really care if my blog formatting is stuffed up and comments are a bit (lot) broken? This blog provides about 20 seconds of interest a day to about 30 people, it's not really a big deal. Most of the people who read this blog read it because they know me and no one reads it because it's got great design.

I worry with the comments being stuffed that people are going to stop reading my blog. Why would that stress me? I don't use this blog to bring people to Christ, nor do I use it to raise awareness of important issues, I don't advocate for the poor and I don't train people to be better leaders, lovers or friends. I talk about a few small thoughts, post a few videos, say a few silly things. It's not a big deal, but I stress anyway, because I want to be liked. How much value do I put into being able to broadcast my small thoughts to a small audience?

In fact not only have I stressed that my blog looks bad, blogging everyday has been making me worry that I don't have enough interesting things to blog about. And I don't. So I worry people might stop reading. Small thoughts, small worries, big deal.

On the other hand, tonight in church we looked at Revelation 4. About the great creatures standing in the throne room of heaven. Of the 24 elders, representing all the people of faith in the history of salvation, who lay down their crowns before God. The creatures and the elders who cry out:

“‘Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,'
who was, and is, and is to come.”

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being.”

God sits in heaven receiving all glory, honour and praise, and he deserves it. He made the universe, he is eternally good, he saved the world through the greatest act of grace in eternity. He is worthy. On the other hand I sit on earth and hope my comments will work so I can be thought of a little bit better by people who don't judge me on the state of my comments or the interestingness of my posts.

I'm not saying that my love of my blog stops me from worshipping God. I am struck however that my eyes are on my blog. And when I spend all this time thinking about my blog and how to fix it, I elevate myself and the importance of my blog. Were I to lift my eyes more, and consider my blog in the context of the glory of God, it may not be such a big issue.

How do you worship God with a blog?

You blog well, you blog to add value to people's lives, and you blog knowing that your blog isn't a big deal in other people's lives, it isn't a big deal in the world, and it isn't a big deal in God's big plans, so it shouldn't be a big deal to you. I want to lay this small blogging crown at God's worthy feet.

I guess it's similar to how we can live. We live well, we live to add value to people's lives, we live to lay our small crowns at the feet of God. The big things to us often aren't really the big things. It helps to lift our eyes sometimes.

God may care about the comments formatting on my blog, but if does he probably doesn't care much. It'd be helpful for me to remember that.

I uploaded my most recent sermon to the podcast.

You can get it here if you want.

On my phone I keep a list of things to blog about. One of the topics I have is "We are meant to be ordinary". I have no memory of writing it, or what thought inspired the idea. It's nice though. There are many great things in the world. Great inventions, great music, great people. But most of us won't make anything world changing or be anyone history making. Most of us are destined for ordinariness. This could be a bad thing, except that many things in life are ordinary and wonderful. Families, friends, potatoes and hoodies. Grass, sunshine, sleep and water. These are all ordinary. So being ordinary can't be too bad if that's the company we keep.

Maybe that's what I was thinking about.

Thanks Mark White.

If you want to fix my blog with a temporary fix while I try and sort out a perminent one, go to
http://runnoft.blogspot.com/ncr.

I'm gonna try and make it work better.

I turned 29 twelve minutes ago. My hair has fallen out and it's raining. This birthday sucks.

I was inspired by Lesley's February 545 photo challenge. I took one at 548 because I didn't want to copy her idea. I'm original! I'm not planning on keeping this up but it's a fun idea.

I'm sitting at my desk. That could be a regular occurrence.

We went and saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tonight. It was more interesting than my photo.

For some reason the comments on my blog aren't working. At least they aren't for me. Are they working for you?

This is encouraging me to leave the blogger land and finally go join a blogging platform that's good.

Not that it's blogger's fault the comments don't work but comments are one of the main reason I hang around blogger.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.