/karen/

Left undone

Thursday, 31 May, 2007

The week in recap:

• Thursday: Slept in (because I got home at 1 am the night before after Katie Noonan at The Vanguard and also because that way I would get about eight hours) and then went to work. Did Briefing editing, then at 4 went to CASE and did some work there preparing for the Human Need and Christian Care conference. I left at about 7, went home, cooked dinner and spent the evening watching television before going to bed early.
• Friday: The Human Need and Christian Care conference didn't start until 9 but I got there at 8:30 so I could do set-up and other bits and pieces. People starting arriving and registration went very smoothly because we didn't have huge numbers of people. The annoying part was having to watch the door to let people in as well as tick them off and give them their name tags and books. I sat out at the registration table until morning tea and then moved the registration table inside. This meant I missed Andrew Cameron's address which was a bit disappointing but he had brought hard copies so I picked one up later. The rest of the conference was pretty interesting—the Hon Kristina Keneally, Minister for Ageing and Disability, spoke about her department and what they were doing in conjunction with churches and other faith-based organisations, Anglicare showed a couple of videos (one about their history, one about what a typical day in the life of Anglicare looks like and one about their new vision statement), Susan King from Anglicare talked about the concept of social exclusion (and told some pretty horrific stories about people in need—particularly children [this one kid was homeless—he lived in a stairwell but he still attended school and did his homework by the street lamps]), and Paul Shepanski from Relationships Forum Australia (who talked about some of the issues I'm grappling with—relationships and what people do with their time. It's interesting that the conclusion of their report says:

  This study demonstrates the connection between changing working patterns and a general decline in wellbeing associated with relationships—particularly those in families, but also including friendships and participation in the broader community. The cold statistics hide immense human tragedy.

  I took my leave just after that and drove over to MM where I did some stuff for The Faithful Writer before Ben was ready to leave. Then we went home and had a date night in, watching Sarah T's favourite movie, The Long Kiss Goodnight.
• Saturday: We slept in, then went over to Fish's place to do work. Ben brought his Yoder essay (and we made various jokes about writing it in Yoda-speech, making reference to Wookiepedia); I brought my knitting, a graphic novel on the Book of Exodus that Greg had lent me called The Lone and Level Sands (which I thought needed a serious edit), and I worked on my graphic novel; and Fish worked on our four-page comic, doing pencils for the second page. We took turns programming the music (Rufus Wainwright, Neko Case and The National), we ate leftover terrible pad thai stir fry for lunch (with this awesome omelette that Fish made), then called it quits at around 5, went to pick up Judith (who was sick), drove to Burwood Greater Union and saw Spider-Man 3. The stupid thing about allocated seating at Burwood Greater Union is that if you buy your tickets separately, you ended up being allocated seats all over the theatre. Of course we forgot that but luckily the cinema audience didn't care and just sat anywhere in the theatre so we got to sit together about halfway from the front. While we were watching the trailers, we noticed that everything looked rather stretchy—the way it does when you watch things that aren't widescreen on a widescreen TV. We told ourselves, “Oh, they'll fix it when the movie stars properly.” Only when the movie started, everything was stretched the other way—vertical. No one moved or did anything but it was annoying me so Ben went out and complained and they fixed it and acted like it didn't happen (I think we should have gotten choc tops for that!) The movie was better than I was expecting it to be (I was expecting there to be more heckling opportunities after Kathleen's post). It was certainly better than Eragon but contained a fair amount of cheese. Afterwards, we went to Pho for dinner (where Ben decided to be adventurous and get the weird fish) and then Gelatissimo for dessert (wasn't too impressed with their chai tea). Judith was still keen to drive to Penrith to play aqua golf and video games, but Ben wasn't so we went back to Judith's and listened to music until two in the morning.
• Sunday: Still, I managed to get eight hours of sleep. Ben and I rose at 11 and spent the day watching God on My Side (which Elsie had asked me to tape for her) and then Sideways (which I had taped ages ago and which Ben had wanted to see). Ben was on band but I wasn't. I went to church with him anyway because I was supposed to have a meeting at 5:30 (which took place later than 5:30 and went for only five minutes but never mind). Malcolm has been trying to encourage us to get to church early. The church was freezing, though, and I was glad I had brought my communist duffle coat and black fluffy hat. We didn't stay for long afterwards because I was tired and Ben had essay things to write.
• Monday: Back to work again at 7:30. I had one article to go and it dragged on and on. I did manage to get it done by the end of the day, then do some web stuff before going home and writing a short piece for Salt—one of two pieces I'd promised them (and the easier of the two).
• Tuesday: This was a sad day because it was the last day I worked for Greg. I slept in for a little because he wasn't going to be in until the afternoon. I got to work at about 10 and started doing the tidy-up post-conference, plus the other admin stuff that needed to be done. And then we did a bit of handover and then it was goodbye. I used to work for two of the best bosses in the world, and now I only work for one. Anyway, I left CASE at 4 but continued to do CASE-related things at home until 6 when we went to church to help Judith with some stuff for the Black Tie dinner. In Bible study, we started Deuteronomy but the study ran quite late so I didn't get home until 10 and then my brain ended up kicking into gear and I couldn't sleep until midnight.
• Wednesday: Not being able to sleep is rather unfortunately when you have to get up at 6 am to catch a train. And even with daylight saving, I still beat the sun. I spent the day at MM doing all manner of web things—site maintenance, new Briefing issue, e-news, updating the store, etc. I left promptly at 4 (because it's always worse if you leave later when you're catching public transport) and continued to do a bit of stuff at home. (I got the advertisement booking form to email a copy to the person who books the ad—yay!) I went to Pilates and we did a killer of a workout, and then Naomi and I sat in the car and talked and prayed for one another.
• Thursday (today): I woke up at 4 in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep for ages. The alarm went off, I turned it off and then went back to sleep again for a little bit. I ended up taking breakfast with me to work, but then had to go out and buy milk because there was none. The Shell service station next door was closed for some bizarre reason so I went to the newsagent. I spent the day doing more web thingys and thinking up Christmas card ideas. And at the end of the day, I had more Briefing stuff to do (double issue stuff, not June Briefing stuff). It's slightly depressing when you have to go back to something you'd thought you'd finished with, no matter what the circumstances; I guess I just dislike going backwards. I drove home, tired and irritated by everything—slow trucks in my lane, the lady in the 4WD in front of me who went forward and then stopped when the light was clearly green—and didn't feel like doing anything so I watched House from the night before, then tried to work on my second Salt piece, but just felt too flat and sad. I talked to Ben while cooking dinner and we watched NCIS.

I'm not sure what to do now; I don't think I'm going to get it done tonight, though the bare bones of it are there. I've even got an introduction which is the hardest part. I wish I could just spent three solid hours working on it tomorrow but I don't have three solid hours, and after this is done, I've got an article I'm doing for Magnolia which is due Monday (very rough first draft is done). Silly Karen. Always overcommitted.

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