I just thought that I'd test out Firefox's new superfluous and hyperactive abominable and scatological spell checking.

Seems to work ok.

I had the best night I've had in a long time tonight.

I came home from church to find Jo in the backyard barbecuing dinner. It was vegie stacks. And they were real good. Good sauce, good cooking, yeah. Vegie food never tasted so good, except vegie pad thai.

I came home craving a beer so immediately Ryan and I headed up to the bottle-o to get a 24 pack. We came back and drank beer and ate dinner with Jo and Jem and Mil. Funny conversations. Plus we decided to go on a Road Trip in 2008! Yeah! I'm excited all ready.

Ryan and Jem got a craving for apple pie so they headed off in search of pie and I went inside to do the washing up. Martin came home while the pie shop was happening. But once Ryan and Jem got back with the pie I got a DVD craving, so Ryan and I popped out to Civic video to use their last 5 minutes of opening time to grab a DVD (or 3).

Then we came home and ate apple pie and watched Cars, which was awesome. Cars is one of the best, happy making films I've seen in a long time. I loved it, it brought continual joy to my innards the whole time.

And that was my night. It may not sound special, but things have been so tense (if that's the word) in my life lately that it was really nice just to hang out with friends and eat and drink and laugh and watch movies and I didn't have to think about anything. And tomorrow is a day off.

God is good to me.

The weekend is finished.

I preached on 1 Kings 21 tonight. It was one of those ones that takes it out of you. Like you're going fine when you're up there but you come off and you're wasted.

I enjoyed the sermon though. I now have three sermons on Elijah between 1 Kings 17 and 1 Kings 21 up my sleeve. That's the substance of a series there. That's set of talks for a camp. That's pretty good.

I'm finding sermons harder to write these days I think. Maybe not, but I seem to be struggling more to find illustrations, and express points and all that. I spent 5 hours yesterday staring at a blank screen. Maybe it's like one day I'll just stop being able to write sermons. I'll just run out of steam. I hope not though. I do like preaching.

I'd love to make a mini-series about Elijah. He's a dude.

This song is good.

Stopping

We watched It Just Stopped last night at the new Belvoir. It's a pretty swanky new theatre. Well, redone theatre at least. But they did so much fundraising that everything you look at has some lefty art lovers name on it. Or Russel Crowe or Geoffory Rush's name. They seem to have paid for half the building.

The play was an absurdist play where the existentialist disaster of the main character led to him finding greater meaning in the world, which was a twist. It was all rather odd though. There are a great big wall of Jelly Beans in the set that was cool.

The story started when all the gadgets of this couple's unit stopped working. No electricity, water, phones, tv, radio, mobile coverage. This was followed with lots of talk about the end of the world. That's what I liked the most. They talked about terrorism, and global warming, and war, and extreme poverty and basicially said "It's obvious the world is about to end". I've been wanting someone to make a film about the end of the world without exagerating what's going on now. I reckon the world is pulling itself apart enough at the moment that you have pleanty material for an end of the world film. Like how about a movie set in 20 years when the waters have risen 6 metres. That's not a The Day After Tomorrow kinda climate disaster, but it's much more scary. Like An Inconvienient Truth but not a documentary. Something with characters and a storyline. That'd be cool.

But all up the play was a little to self-conciously absurd for me. Whatever that means. Still, I do like a night out at the theatre. And I did get to see John Woods and ever since Blue Healers who hasn't wanted to see Sgt. Tom Croydon in the flesh?

New Places

We went to a pub down the road tonight. There are 4 pubs within 500 meters of my house and now I've been to 2 of them. 2 to go. It was fun to find something new with a big back yard.

This morning I put on my undies and there was a moth in them. I'll tell ya' that was a scary think to feel climing around my bum. The moth dust he left in there left me itchy for hours.

This house is like an avery for small flying things at the moment.

Oh Dear

From an article on SMH:

"Dr Jensen said the US church had made genuine attempts to express regret over global tensions but it was missionary-like in its position on human sexuality."

Maybe they're having a dig, maybe no one was paying attention. Either way, it's a little amusing. Immature and a pretty lame way of paying us Anglicans out, but it did make me giggle.

What Dr Jensen actually said was:

"The powerful individualism of American culture, and its triumphalistic belief that it leads the world in civic freedoms has captured the church. The new faith is a missionary religion. America is a missionary country, with its version of human freedom to export throughout the world."

From here and here.

Bible Happy

I wrote a Bible study on Luke 1:5-25 last week and it wasn't very good. It was simple and boring and badly put together.

Today I had to do it with my seniors (I did it with my juniors on Friday) and I was determined to make it good. So we did it and I put a lot more effort in giving back ground and pulling out connecting passages and I had lots of fun. I'm not sure how the rest went, one of the girls fell asleep, but I thought it was cool. Actually come to think of it one of the guys fell asleep too. That makes it two thirds of my small group fell asleep. Gosh.

But, ignoring the narcolepsy inducing tones of my voice, I felt it was a positive experience. We covered salvation history from the time of King David to the End of the World. And we looked at prophesy, and Elijah and the work of John the Baptist. I think we looked at Luke, Mark, Matthew, Acts and Malachi, which I thought was pretty impressive.

So I don't know how the study went in comparison to others, but I'd hate to think what it would have been like if I just did the one I'd written last week.

I hate the feeling that there are so many people around you having a hard time and you can't help them.

Snooze

We had an audition today for the new production, and then I had a party to go to tonight. In between I had a few spare hours so I had a sleep on the floor of my office. It was wonderful. I slept for an hour and a half. I'm not sure why but sleeping on my office floor for a substantial amount of time, on comfy cushions is one of the most relaxing things to do. To wake up in my darkened office after a long nap...bliss. Probably because my office is where I work. So to sleep there just heightens the relaxation.

I know I've been a rather bad blogger. At least by my standards. Yesterday was too big to blog today. Not enough time. Soon though.

Dad bought me Union Jack boxers from the UK and I'm wearing them today for the first time. I love them. I'm sure wearing the Union Jack as underwear is making some statement about our colonial past.

Speaking of colonial past, I watched The Proposition with Ryan the other night, it was well done. And it wasn't as harrowing as I thought it would be. So many well written characters. Nick Cave can write good depressing music and good depressing films. Is there any sort of depressing writing that man can't do?

It is Finished

Well I'm done with my assessment on Job. I tell you, this is the latest I ever want to hand an assessment in.

But at least it's done. And I actually quite enjoyed doing this assessment.

Dear Spammers

Incest doesn't excite me.

Not even if it's Russian.

George Says

"We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America."

George W Bush's response to being asked what he would do about global warming shortly after becoming president.

When Ari Fletcher (George's press secretary) was asked if George would ask Americans to drive their cars less, he replied

"That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one."

From here (pages 159-160 to be precise).

Angus Draws Pictures

My friend Angus made this while we were at College together. I like it, he's got talent that man. Check it out.

The day was good. The weather was cool. The rain was drizzly. I did a mail out and enjoyed myself.

I like the silly conversations in life. And I had majority of them today.

James is the Man

Ryan, Jem and I just watched Rebel Without a Cause, it was wonderful. James Dean is so cool, awesomely. Like Aragorn cool. The kind of cool where you just think, I'd love to be that person's friend, and hang out with them and feel my self-worth increasing because Aragorn and James Dean are friends with me. It's the kind of cool where he could do anything, say anything thing, make any face and you think "Wow".

You should see the film. It was tops.

We also ate at Anna Thai. 10 points for Anna Thai.

I Grope Grooms

First Jon...



..then Howie.



I just can't help myself I guess.

Visit

Some of the people from church came and ate dinner with Ryan and I at the pub tonight. They came to me which never happens. They were a long way from home. It made me feel loved.