Finally the Summer weather has arrived. It was starting to look like the sun-free summer. But now it has come and we went to the beach. It was a joyous occasion that made me happy to be Australian. Not that I swam a lot. I got a little lazy. But I did swim and then I sat. And I was happy.

There was very little dung at the wedding.

What is it with this time of life and weddings? Actually I know the answer to that, but damn there are a lot of weddings.

I went to another wedding today. My lovely friends Matt and Beck veiled and tuxed. I was on PowerPoint in the service which was scary, because I could stuff up and the whole church would look at me in judgement as they try and sing Amazing Grace to the wrong words. But it went ok.

The wedding was lovely. The Groom cried like a girl which was nice to see, although I worried about how the photos would look. You don't want to look all puffy. Especially if the Bride isn't.

The bridal party all got to sit at the front on the stage in a semi-circle instead of standing at the front for the ceremony. It was cool. Kinda like the Council of Elrond. Which made me want a wedding where there is a proper recreation of the Council of Elrond. That'd be awesome.

The reception was held a cool place in Terry Hills with lovely gardens and high roofs. I was amazed that there was such quality in Terrey Hills. It's like someone smuggled in some 5 star-class.

Tanya and I were the MCs which was good fun. I like having things to do at weddings and receptions because sometimes I run out of things to talk to people about and mingling scares me. So I was joyed to have a job. There was a Reception Coordinator named Paul who I liked very much. He was amazingly organised, kept telling us what a good job we were doing, and answered all our questions on how things should be done. If you ever want a reception in Terrey Hills get Paul because he is good.

Often people talk about how single people go to weddings and get depressed. And I've seen it happen. It's something about happy couples having their couple dreams come true that highlights the singleness of us bachelors and spinsters. But I have never really found weddings depress me. They bore me sometimes, but not depress. I think my eternal optimism just means that I plan my wedding. I dream about my Elvis minister and what kind of cool cars I'll get, and it's all kind of fun. I even wandered around the most romantic gardens in the world tonight, alone, and didn't get depressed. Of course it did occur to me that the hidden chandeliered Roman rotunda thing in the deserted garden would have been much more enjoyable if I could have pashed someone in it. But I think that's probably just the nature of pashing, it's much more fun with someone else (preferably a girl).

And that's what I think of weddings.

I'm now happily on holidays. I have a few short days to savour the taste of no work. And I'm going to savour them with plenty of DVDs, lying around and diligently ignoring the emails which I don't want to read. Yeehaa!

I'm constantly baffled by the concept of the present. How can one moment be so real only to instantly become the past, instantly unattainable, never to come back? How long is now? Time is constantly shifting, it never stops. It's like a conveyor belt running under your fingers, no sooner have you felt it than it's gone. You can't measure an instant yet it's all life is, instants.

It messes with my head.

That's all.

I bought their album on iTunes because it was cheap, I had iTunes gift cards, I had no idea who they were so if they turned out to be good, I'd be hip and trendy and interested in little known bands. Although maybe they're big. I heard they one the J Award.

Anyway, that album is rather boring. They're is some good music in there and one or two good song, but other than that, pretty dull. And the lead singer sounds like Tim Freedman and that annoys me. So I guess there goes my desires to be alternative and cool liking alternative bands. Still I like their name. It's a good one in the "The Somethings" set (eg The Clash, The Frames, The Streets, The Killers, The Smiths. The Wiggles). So it'll look good in my iPod Artists, as long as they don't get popular and everyone knows they're boring.

There's been a little bit of trailer joy over the past few days to help a boy geek out.

The Dark Knight brought out it's first proper trailer. You can see it here. It pretty much rocks. I can't wait. Batman Begins was awesome.

And a new teaser for Wall-E, Pixar's Summer 08 film came out. And that's pretty cool too. You can see it here.

So trailers have made my day a little.

This is why I love the Challenge version of Scrabulous:



Meanwhile, today is the 37th anniversary of when I invented the computer. Check it out.

Somebody thought of it before me, but it was a good idea.

Around midnight last night Ryan and I were watching A Scanner Darkly (which was good by the way) and Mil came rushing down stairs and out the front door in her pyjamas saying "Are you going to join me in making our presence felt?" or something like that. Mil was followed quickly out the door by Martin who was putting on a shirt and so Ryan and I got up and followed.

Turns out there was a man in the street fighting with his girlfriend. Mil and Martin could hear it from their room. Ryan and I didn't hear it as we were too busy watching an animated, drug-addicted Keanu Reeves. Apparently he smashed something and the woman said "I'm really scared of you right now" and so Mil and Martin got up to go and make sure the man knew we were there and we weren't going to let him punch her in the head or something.

So there we were on the street at midnight watching an angry man shout obscenities at his girlfriend and the stars. By the time we were there he'd walked down the street and the girl, after Mil asked her if she was alright, had decided to follow him. So I took the chance to check if it was one of my car windows that got smashed. It wasn't. Turns out it was someone's rear-view mirror.

Eventually the man walked away from the fight and came up the street shouting words that shouldn't be put on a youth minister's blog. As he walked past Martin he warned him to stop starring or there'd be more broken than a mirror if he wasn't careful. Lucky he didn't do anything or Martin would have broken him. And I would have danced around trying to figure out how to be helpful for sure. We would have made lethal combination.

Then we went inside and back to bed or our movies depending on what would we were doing before the fight.

As I watched the fight it renewed my desire to learn Kung Fu. Had something happened I would like to know I could do something to protect the weaker party. Plus Kung Fu is cool.

This morning I went for a run and discovered that it was my mirror that was broken. I hadn't seen it last night. So now I have no right side rear view mirror. Oh well. I'll just have to get it fixed. I hope that man doesn't get seven years bad luck. I hope he finds Jesus and learns to stop abusing his girlfriend. That'd be best.

Tabitha has solved the problem of global warming.

I didn't want to stick a new one up so soon, but seeing as you made the request, here it is.

Sometimes ministry comes at you with tough decisions with bad outcomes either way. It's times like that you wish there was neat a third option. But I guess I'm learning this year that messy problems generally have messy solutions. Which means that even if you manage to find what's right it's not always going to feel good.

I think the cross shows us that. I doubt you could find a messier, more unpleasant solution than that.

I'm a little embarrassed about that last post. It was late and I was filled with passion for an online DVD library. Things got out of hand.

Let's just pretend that never happened ok.

May I just say I'm really loving movies at the moment. And a lot of that is due to Quickflix. It's really cool. We signed up for $36.95 a month and they send us three DVDs to watch, we watch them, send them back, they send another three (or one or two depending how many we send back). And they do that as often as we like. Unlimited. The name is a little bit of a misnomer as it isn't really all that quick. There's a two day turn around on DVDs and my local video store has about 3 minute turn around, depending how fast it takes to walk from my door to the store and back, but still, this place has the range, and it's cheaper.

On Tuesday we watched The Phantom Menace because Mil and Martin haven't seen any of the Star Wars series. So we're educating them. It's pretty fun. It's like being around for a little bit of film history unfolding as we usher them into the culture and customs of a world a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away where many have been before them.

Then we watched Akira which was an awesome piece of Japanese animation. Rather strange, but cool. Guns, explosions, post-WWIII motorbike world. Yeah.

Tomorrow we're getting a few including Attack of the Clones and Rambo: First Blood Part II. I'm very excited.

I love Quickflix.

Actually, if you want a free trial for 30 days and to give us a free iPod shuffle, leave me a comment and I'll send you a referral and then we all get free stuff! I'd just add all my friends' emails but that's kinda just like spamming my friends and I'm not into that.

But you should try it because it's heaps fun.

Look at me, I'm being turned into a viral marketer. Damn. I'm part of the machine.

David and I were on the approach to the Harbour Bridge on Tuesday evening and things started to get a little slow. We looked up ahead and saw there was a truck lying on its side. There weren't any cars with flashing lights there, just a truck lying on its side blocking two lanes of traffic.

As we got a bit closer we saw there was a ladder on the side of the truck, which we thought was a little odd. On passing the truck we noticed it was a Police Rescue truck. I thought that was pretty funny. I don't think anyone was hurt, there was just a Police Rescue guy and a traffic man standing around looking rather annoyed.

I couldn't work out if a Police Rescue truck waiting to be rescued was ironic or not. I think it was.

I was thinking, as I lay on my couch watching the bonus features of Indiana Jones, that DVDs have changed my life. Perhaps not massively, but they have brought megaloads of joy to me.

As a film geek who loves anything to do with film making, having DVDs packed full of special features just pretty much makes my day. It brings me so much joy being able to watch all those "Making of" featurettes.

Every time we make a film we shoot a second camera just for making of footage because I love them so much. Not that we ever edit the footage.

One day I hope to know people who are making a film just so I can make a "making of" because I like them so much.

Not that I watch all the featurettes on every DVD. Some are boring as. When it's just people doing press junkets and talking about how good the film is with one or two shots on the set, I get bored.

When it's like the Extended Edition LOTR 2 hours of one documentary per film, I'm in heaven. Show me cameras, show me lights, show me clapper boards, you can even show me the catering truck and I'm happy.

Maybe one day I'll get to make my feature film. Or television series. Or both. One day...

Here's another Tabitha video for all you Tabitha lovers out there.

For those of you who don't like her, feel free just to ignore.

I got new wiper blades for my car today, so I was pretty stoked when it rained all the way home so I could test them out. "I can see clearly now the rain has come."

On Wednesday I applied, and was approved, to have the last week of December and the first week of January off. In staff meeting yesterday I came out having reduced my leave to just the last week of December and having committed to a three week sermon series from January 6th. How'd I manage that?

...and I voted Republican, I'd want Huckabee for my president.

Why didn't Kevin Rudd do something like this?

People's comments on the Tabitha videos keep bringing me joy.

Check them out.