/Karen/

In passing

Tuesday, 14 February, 2006

I haven't had much time for blogging these days because I've made other things a priority. On Friday evening some of my friends from school came over for dinner to watch the second Introducing God talk. (They saw the first one at Jamberoo in January.) This was one was on Genesis 1 and creation. I had forgotten how much Dominic can pack—in terms of ideas and concepts—into just 20 minutes. We had a very good discussion afterwards which made me look forward to the third talk which probably won't happen until March, given my commitments.

On Saturday I slept in because I was pretty much wasted from all the stuff I'd been doing and from lack of sleep. I spent the afternoon writing blog posts and doing bits and pieces that I'd been meaning to get around to doing for a while. I was supposed to be writing an article for Bec for Salt which was, ironically, on the subject of rest, but my body was refusing to do anything but instead screamed out for rest. So I spent the evening watching TV (Veronica Mars ... another example of Channel Ten's duplicitous advertising: they told us this was the finale but a quick glance at Wikipedia reveals that we're only halfway through the first season. And of course Channel Ten is resuming normal scheduling for the ratings season. Grrr).

On Sunday I went and tackled the rest article and actually got it done within a reasonable time frame too. I had been hoping to do some transcription work (because once I finished this last file, I would get paid) but it was not to be; once again, I was over-ambitious. I got roped into playing for church on Sunday because the rostered pianist was sick and we were an all-girl band which was pretty cool. Malcolm preached on the fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 6 and it was very challenging and thought-provoking. I've been enjoying his series on the Holy Spirit very much. Then, because Ben was leading, we tried to lead the pack-up effort and get everything over and done with as soon as possible, but with staff meeting I still didn't get home until 10 pm—Ben dropped me off so he could drive Marinka home so she wouldn't have to catch the train and walk in the dark.

Monday I got into work at 7:30 and found that my computer (a Mac) was giving me the Blue Screen of Death (I didn't realise that Macs did that too). For one and a half hours, I turned it on, turned it off, read a manuscript by Peter Bolt, unplugged it, plugged it back in, turned on Emma's computer to check the Apple page for troubleshooting tips to no avail. At quarter to nine, Tony came in, looking worse for wear.

“I'm having a bad day,” I told him.

“The day hasn't even started yet,” he told me.

But he came and helped me with my computer woes and I was quite impressed that he knew what he was talking about because most people just leave the computers alone and yell for the IT guy. We managed to reboot the silly thing from CD, then reboot from one of the hard drives (obviously not the one I needed) but then I found that I couldn't access the network, my email program or any of the normal applications I use because that hard drive was working off a lower operating system than what I normally use.

“Can I go home?” I said to Tony.

He smiled and said, “What you need is a nice strong cup of coffee.”

“Coffee! Yuck!” I said, not really mollified at all. (I knew these MM people were in a plot to make me a caffeine addict!)

And then Guan came in.

“My computer's giving me the blue screen of death!” I wailed to him.

“It's too early,” he replied (it was 9:15). “I need coffee.”.

So he got himself a coffee and tried all the things that we'd tried to no avail. Then Emma came in and said, “Oh, by the way, Simon was fiddling on your computer last Friday and he was rather confused and asked if you had changed any of the settings. He said that the next time you started it up, when the blue scrolley bar comes up, you have to hold down a particular button ... but I can't remember what it is.”

Great! I thought. Why couldn't he have just emailed me and let me know?

Emma ended up calling Simon to find out what his instructions had been and we finally got the thing working properly and booting from the right hard drive. So I was able to work (finally!) but then I found that accessing the internet was slow so anything I wanted to do online was drawn-out and painful anyway.

I had lunch with Stacie and we had a good chat, sharing about our respective husbands who have depression. Then in the afternoon Guan did something cool on the network which allowed both of us to edit the same document using the same program at the same time. It was a bit like chatting but not really because he might be fiddling with the words at the top of the paragraph and I might be fiddling with the words at the bottom. So together we fixed a CHN that I had written that morning and brianstormed an idea for a piece for H/E 10.

And then Duncan and Fiona came over for dinner which meant that I was hopeless outnumbered by Psych majors. It was very good to catch up with them—I can't remember the last time I saw Duncan—and despite being abominably tired, I think I still managed to make decent conversation.

Today I enjoyed sleeping in but I've woken up with a sore throat and I have a feeling I've caught what Tony thought he was coming down with which he got from his two sick kids. (I hate air conditioning and the way they spread germs around.) Ben has a sore throat too so maybe that's not it (unless I gave it to him). Anyway, it's Valentine's Day and I gave Ben Rear Window on DVD and Rocking the Suburbs (Ben Folds) and he gave me If Time Could Change Us (Katie Noonan and Paul Grabowsky) which was very sweet of him because I had just borrowed it from Ian at work. And I finished transcribing that file so I could get paid and I finally convinced myself that applying for an ABN was a good idea so I did that online so I won't be losing most of my income for these freelance gigs in tax. It will be nice to get paid; our bank account balance is slipping alarmingly fast.

/Karen/ had a thought at 3:53 PM | | EE comments (4)

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