The good thing about it getting dark earlier these days is that you think it's later than it is, and then you have more time than you think you do.

It's lovely.

To celebrate that today (Tuesday) was a day off Ryan and I brought pop-corn and Coke and watched Deja Vu on the big lounge room wall. It was lots of fun. The film was quite silly, but I got suspense butterflies so it can't be all bad. Actually I quite enjoyed it, there was guns, explosions, hummers, and secret government agencies. The perfect Tuesday afternoon movie.

So I was going to write an exigetical essay tonight. It's due in tomorrow. It was going to be on John 3:1-15. Seeing as I have so much to do at the moment, I had been preparing for it for at least 4 days. I'm working smart you see. I read my commentaries, I did lots of thinking. And tonight after a lot of procrastination, I was ready to start writing. In fact I did start writing, I wrote:

"1-2 - John opens up his story of Nicodemus’ visit..."*

And then thought "I should go find out how long this needs to be" and found my assessment sheet and it turns out the essay should be on John 1:37-46, not 3:1-15.

So now I'm not going to write the essay tonight, instead I'm going to edit this film.

I'll write the essay next week. Or the week after.

*That sentence probably may not have made it into the actual essay, I was just getting some words on paper. But then again, I'm rather lazy so the first 2,250 words that come out can very easily be the only ones when it comes to essay writing.

My car got fixed today. It had been running on 3 cylinders for ages. Driving was a fine art of balancing the accelerator somewhere between full and on the floor. I was getting good at overtaking at 50km/h in an 80 zone.

Now though, oh she's a different beast. With all four cylinders running, it's like I'm driving a V8. I just touch the accelerator and she flies. I feel like I could do anything. She could be a racing van. I could take her to Eastern Creek and drive with the boys in the SSs and XR8s. It'd be way sick.

So I lay in bed this morning thinking about writing a book, as I do from time to time.

Not really because I want to, but because I would really like to be a itinerant preacher at some stage. But the way to actually be able to do that and support yourself is to be popular. The main ways to get popular on the speaking circuit is to pastor a mega church or be a famous Christian author.

I doubt I'm ever going to pastor a mega-church. So I guess it'll have to be writing a book. Though I don't really have anything to write about.

I'll just publish my blog and call it "Youth Pastor Blogs: The Intimate Thoughts of the Youth Pastor a mega-Youth Group". In fact I might do that on Lulu just for funnies. Or I could publish my sermons and call it "Meditations on Glory: Sermons from T.J. French" or something pretentious like that. I'd call my self T.J. because that sounds smarter. I think the lazy route is a good one.

However being lazy isn't really going to get me on Koorong's top 10.

Actually I'm not all that interested in being on Koorong's top 10 at all. I don't even really mind if I don't make it big as a preacher. I'd just like to be able to survive. So maybe it'll just be check-out hunk by day, preacher by every forth weekend.

However if there was something I knew about that I wanted to write about I guess I would. Any ideas folks?

Last night we had a house meeting. We spent about 45 minutes talking about food shopping again. We talk about food shopping all the time. We've been living together for over a year and we still can't work out how to shop for food.

Oh well. We'll get there one day.

Fondue at youth group tonight. Yes. Like fondue.

Some friendly parents gave me U2 by U2 which is one of my favourite books in the whole world, and now I own a copy. So generous. I like people.

I have this feeling that something significant happened today, and can't remember what it is. Maybe something significant did happen and I just missed it.

Oh well. Hopefully I'll find out tomorrow.

I said something quotable tonight. A sound bite that as soon as it fell out of my mouth I thought, "Gosh, I wish I'd preached that."

It was something about God's plan for our lives and living life to the fullest. But I can't remember what.

I have realised I rarely talk about how I'm feeling on my blog anymore (I realised that years ago). As the blog became more public, I became less so.

But let me tell you how I'm feeling right now:

Sleepy
Content
Peaceful
and every 2 hours of so
Frustrated
and
Perplexed

So there you go. If that's not vulnerability, I don't know what is.

I have to be up at 5am tomorrow to finish shooting this film. Finally.

Good night my friends.

So I made it to the conference yesterday and today. It was with Dr Arch Hart. He was good. Spoke well, he was interesting, he told funny stories, he taught me about the brain. Did you know, in brain measurement terms, the only thing more pleasurable than sex is cocaine? That's what I learnt today.

Stephen and I ate lunch yesterday in Top Ryde food court. It was just near the conference. I must say I haven't been to an uglier, more depressing food court in my life. It was wonderful. I had some chicken stir fry thing that was tasty but sloppy. It did stir the pleasure centre of my brain. Happy is the man who eats bad food in a tacky food court. Or maybe it's just me that enjoys it.

I've been well getting into The Frames lately.

Martin and I just watched Crank on DVD. It was pretty silly. Not silly like Monty Python. Silly like a poor quality action film.

I have a conference on Burn Out today, tomorrow, and Thursday. Yesterday I wasn't really feeling like going. I was feeling way too tired and like if there was anything in my life that was going to burn me out, it was going to be a conference on burn out.

Anyway, I was thinking about not going today, seeing as I usually have Tuesdays off, and I felt like I needed it. But I decided to go. I went to bed last night having made the decision to get myself to Ryde by 9am for this conference.

I dreamt all last night about being busy. It wasn't very nice.

Then my alarm went off at 7am and the first thought that went through my mind was "I hate Tuesdays" which is probably something I haven't thought the whole time I've had Tuesdays as my day off. I turned my phone on. It went "Beep-Beep Beep-Beep", I had a message. I thought "It's probably someone asking me to do something." Just before I got out of bed, I read the message. It was Stephen (acting-boss) saying he needed to rest and he wasn't going to the conference today.

Oh boy was that a good message to read.

I went back to bed and slept till 11 and didn't dream about business at all. Actually I think I dreamt about rocket launches (like the Apollo rockets).

I didn't go to the conference today. I went to the movies.

I'll go tomorrow.

I was talking to John about smart people tonight. So I came home and did some IQ tests.

One told me I had an IQ of 145. The other told me I a lot less. I like the first one. According to that one, I'm a genius!

However both only asked me 30 questions. 30 questions wouldn't seem to be enough to properly judge your IQ. Especially when the one that gave me a higher score was all true and false. So I think it's silly. But still it does make me feel good about myself. Now I can walk around and look at people and think, "According to one IQ test, there's 99.97% chance I'm smarter than you." And then I'll laugh at them and challenge them to game of chess.

I complain whenever I write a sermon that it gets harder every time. But I think I'll just decide that writing sermons is hard.

I did preach today in the morning and it went alright. It was on forgiveness which was a good topic. I realised I haven't spent much of my life feeling like I need to forgive people because I rarely feel like people hurt me. Happy way to live I guess.

I had about 4 conversations at church in a row about Bible things. It was kinda like speed ethical challenge. Which was kinda fun, except I had to remember that most of the answers I gave were going to have implications for what people did in their life. So I needed to makes sure I was taking it serously. I'm not sure how I did. I hope I wasn't to flippant.

The trailer for Once Was Lost has arrived!



Thank you David for making my computer work.

Nathan and I went for a very special meeting at the big new Homemakers SupaCenta! Which baffled me as to how you could make a building so big just for homemakers. People must really like making their homes on the Northern Beaches.

Anyway we were there for the food, which wasn't spectacular, but it was new so that's good.

The funnest part was getting distracted by the stacker game. Which Wikipedia now tells me I am destined not to win. But it was good. I felt like I almost won an iPod. Not that I need one, but fun anyway.

Rob Thomas' new song opens just like a worship song. Like a Matt Redman studio ditty. I'll tell ya, people used to think worship music was uncool, but it's leading the music revolution. You just watch.

As far as I can tell the Budget isn't all that much to get excited about. It looks more like a move to win voters from Labor than actually spending money right. "Tax cuts for everyone, especially Labor voters!" Anyone think there might be an election coming?

Where's the money for the environment. Like the serious money. $741 million isn't really going to do a lot for climate change. Not when we're spending $5 billion on University building projects. I have no problem with building projects, I just think that perhaps we could put the same amount of effort, or more, into saving our planet.

I would have loved to have seen more money go into foreign aid. How about having a shot at getting close to our 0.7% commitment? If we've got $13.6 billion surplus I reckon we might have a little to spare for the our less well off friends. $13.6 billion is over four times what we will spend on aid in the next year. And considering that we're doing to spend $22 billion on defense, it all leaves a lot to be desired.

(Thank you Ben for telling me about aid. No one else was talking about it. Silly SMH.)

I'm sure though there is good stuff in there. Like education is good. Though I'd be happy to see more money to public schools. And I quite like tax cuts personally, but I'd rather see money spent on good stuff.

And I'm always happy to see them spending money on film making. Well done Costello.

I'm not sure why they call some of these places internet cafes. I guess it's better than, dark smelly rooms, full of dark smelly people playing war games and watching anime.

I decided to indulge my love of dark smelly internet rooms and come here to do something with my day off. I couldn't quite stomach the idea of sitting at home watching Futurama. For some reason I feel like I have to leave the house to get the feeling that my day has been worthwhile. Plus the internet died which forced me out of the house.

I didn't mention that I saw Spiderman 3 on Thursday night. It was a most enjoyable experience, though I can't say it was a particularly good film. The action was fun, and it made me laugh. But really, why did Peter Parker have to have a few dance sequences? Can you imagine Bruce Wayne having a dance sequence? No. He's way too cool for that. So why give one to Parker? I think the production team must have just got bored and thought, "Let's throw in a few musical numbers and a bit of slapstick. That'll keep us interested." Oh well.

Jo made a treasure hunt for our house last night. It was way fun. She made clues and hid them all over the house. David and Mum joined us for half the fun. At the end the prize was Jo taking us all out for cake and coffee. Splendid! I had a banana smoothie and sticky date pudding. I walked home feeling pretty fat.

I always enjoy getting sticky date. I think just because peole say "I'll have a sticky date." And that appeals to my childish sense of humour.

Well it's past midnight now which means I'm no longer the Acting Senior Minister at church. Stephen will be back on deck in the morning, and we'll come under the watchful eye of a local minister. My week long reign has come to an end. It was an enjoyable week though.

I think my only extra job this week as Acting Senior Minister (that's a self-given title) was to do the announcements at the 6:30 service. I prepared and everything. But that got taken away from me when the Spirit moved and announcements got bumped to the back of the service. Why people think that the prompting of the Spirit is more important than my notices is beyond me, but there you go.

I was going to use the opportunity to announce a reworking of the Church budget to allow for a $30,000 staff allowance for Thai food and a new evangelistic program called "No Youth without a Jumping Castle". But sadly I could not. I guess I never got the chance to use my powers for good or evil.

Maybe next time we loose a Senior Minister and an Assistant Minister.

And she gives
I get
Without giving anything to me

Like a morning sun
Like a morning
Like a morning sun
Good good morning sun - Damien Rice

Yesterday I was about to drive to College and my car decided it needed more oil. At the moment my car is running particularly badly, so I decided not to push my luck by driving around with no oil.

So I went to the petrol station bought some oil, I drove back to the church to oil the car up, but realised I'd bought the wrong oil. I was too embarrassed to take it back to the petrol station so I walked to Woolies and bought the right stuff.

I then started work on my car. Normally putting oil in the car is a quick affair. Not in my car though. Because the engine is under the seat you have to lift the seats, take off different panels, unscrew this and that. It was lots of fun. I really liked getting in the engine, even if I wasn't doing anything remotely impressive. Then while I was there, I decided I might oil my door because that had been squeaking. And oil the other door. And tighten the back door.

Finally when I was finished, I'd spent about an hour and I was way too late for college. So I stayed at church and worked. In the end I think I had much more fun getting dirty engine grease all over my hands than I would have had at college. I think for the next few days my new career dream will be to become a mechanic. I could be the preaching mechanic. That'd be tops fun.

I heard the new single from Linkin Park's new album. I suspect they might be going the way all Christian artists went in the beginning of the millennium and releasing a worship album. Finally the secular world has caught on.

Check out the lyrics:

So let mercy come,
And wash away…
What I’ve Done.

"What I've Done" - Linkin Park

I went to teach Scripture today. I got out of the car, went around the to the passenger seat to get my badge out of the glove box, and proceeded to lock my keys in the car! Grrr! That's the forth time this year.

When I got my NRMA I thought, I probably won't need it, but my car might break down. Now I've called them out 4 times, and only because of my keys. I rather annoy myself.

What could have been a good discovery though, was that while I was looking for a shop to sell me some food while I waited for the NRMA to come, I found a Thai food shop! Thai food right near where I work. With $8 lunch specials none the less. This could revolutionize my working life.

Alas as, I think it was Helen said "Never eat suburban Thai". Though I might be paraphrasing. I went back and got it for lunch. It wasn't very good. And I now have ingested enough oil to refine it and run a small car for a week.

Oh well. I guess you win some and some taste disgusting.

I've been watching a bit of Prison Break lately. I've watched the first five episodes of season one, and I can't say I'm all that impressed. I'm not sure why everyone likes it. That main guy (Michael) really annoys me. He takes himself way too seriously. I want to shout at him "You're not as good as you think you are punk!".

Actually I don't really like any of the characters. Except for Lincoln, but only because he looks like someone I'd want to be friends with. Other than that, I doubt I care one way or the other what happens too him, he just mopes around.

The script leaves a lot to be desired too. Someone should tell the writers to stop using such kitsch lines. And maybe not to be so predictable.

All that said, I'll probably keep watching it. I've started now I probably have to finish it.