Long weekend without blogging
Monday, 02 October, 2006
This blog isn't keeping up with my life. My fault. I would have blogged about the previous Saturday night when we had the FEVA concert “How Sweet the Sound”—at which Ben played and sang his original material and completely stole the show—but I wanted to put the photos online, and I haven't shrunk them down and uploaded them yet.. (The entry fee was $15 and someone told me afterwards they'd heard people saying, “I would have paid $15 just to see him!”.)
Ah well. This past week was Briefing week and I spent most of it wrestling with the one article. I hate it when that happens. But the article in question was in first draft form and it was our fault for not getting back to the author sooner. Luckily he was pretty easygoing and liked most of what I'd done to his words. And luckily everyone else was pretty happy with my editing job, plus Tony had written the editorial, done the CHN and edited down the whopping 6,000-word pastor's brief to 3,000 words (which only needed a quick tidy—though what is it with ministers—dare I say it, Anglican ministers—with their passive constructions, their obfuscated language and their rambling sentences which sound more like sermons than articles???)
I spent some of Friday doing web stuff for Briefing #337. I am bracing myself for the response—particularly from the seven-day creation crew. I had no idea what the other web extra thing was and Tony is on leave next week, so I spent a bit of time trying to track him down. I also put up the position vacant ads. (Hmm, just checked my work email and found that Emma emailed me instructions about them. She probably did that after I went home on Friday. Isn't it great I'm already one step ahead of her!!!)
Following work, I drove straight to church and Baz was home as promised. He let me into the newly refurbished church building to use the FEVA photocopier for my outlines for PEC Women's Fellowship. He also showed me around the inside. Apparently the church can seat 600. It's quite a nice old building but it's going to be really weird with our congregation as we only have around 50 people in it. Church won't be quite the same ...
The FEVA photocopier was doing its job but occasioanlly chewing paper and putting crumpling lines in most of it. I worked out that if I used manual feed, that wouldn't happen. I finished the job in an hour, drove home, started folding and compiling with Ben, then Cyndi showed up and helped me finish off the lot. I discovered that my old Vaio laptop had finally carked it (so sad!!! Does anyone know how to dispose of laptops? Surely you don't just throw them into the trash??) I called Lara and asked if we could use Cameron's. I hoped that he had flash on his computer. I made chicken and zucchini risoni hot pot for dinner (without the risoni) and then Cyndi and I drove to Lara's place. I closeted myself in the front room to practice. I wasn't very nervous because I had a very good idea of who was coming and I knew them all. But I needed to familiarise myself a little more with the talk.
Bron came to save the day with her funky laptop and everything worked perfectly—even the fonts on Emma's PowerPoint slideshow. 14 women showed up—including the lovely Sonja. And then we started and the whole thing came off pretty much as we'd planned—Emma doing the welcome, introducing the topic, getting everyone to do the R&R exercise (that's where you make a list of everything that you find relaxing, refreshing or fun), interviewing me and then I launched into Part I of my talk. To me, the whole thing went by very quickly but I looked at my watch and it was quarter to nine so I must have been speaking for close to 40 mins! We took a break to stretch, we did the Stress-o-meter test and then I did Parts II and III of my talk. We prayed in groups, had a short question time (I didn't get any curly questions there!) and then I finished off the evening by performing Matthew Salvetti's “God is Good” on Cameron and Lara's piano.
Lots of people gave me good feedback of the talk, and since then, I've discovered that a couple of the girls realised that they might have depression as a result of it. So that's heaps good. I've been debating whether to put it online here—part of me wants to but it's very long. Maybe I could do it in chunks? I'll keep thinking.
Saturday was spent sleeping in, going to Tim and Liz's for brunch, going for a walk with them and baby Miriam down to the river to feed the ducks (and there were a couple of mallards in the water!) and then walking to the gelato factory for some gelato goodness. In the afternoon I had a much-needed snooze and then we headed to George's place for her birthday where we caught up with some old SPUBS people (Staff and Postgraduate University Bible Study). We were the last to leave—it was nice chatting to George after everyone else had gone but soon she had to kick us out because she was tired. She loaded us up with leftover food too.
Sunday I spent sleeping and reading Mercedes Lackey's Arrows of the Queen trilogy. I love those books but they're really quite idealistic. I've always thought of Mercedes Lackey as being the Enid Blyton of fantasy writing: everyone is basically good (and the ones who aren't just evil!) and there's always a solution to the problem at hand. That said, she does make you feel for her characters, even if she is rather indulgent with them—especially compared to someone like Robin Hobb who views humanity as being more complex than “good”.
It's my band's turn to be on for a month (and this month has five weeks! *Groan!*) Sarah joined us for band practice and I was getting a little stressed because having an electric guitar added to the mix changes what I'm doing. I was also getting stressed because I was remembering some sad stuff but I didn't identify what that was until Cameron got up and started preaching. I didn't hear most of his sermon as a result.
There were only about 20 of us in the congregation that night, and the lovely people from the prison ministry had made a feast for kings—roast pork with carrots, beans, potatos and bread. Someone brought a tub of water for washing up so I was able to serve the church by washing dishes without ever having to get up; everything was brought to me (I like it when that happens!) I also had a very interesting conversation with Toby about collaboration which whetted my appetite for what he is going to say at writing group next Saturday.
Today I slept in, read a lot, did two weeks' worth of laundry, watched TV and finished knitting my fingerless gloves. Bliss.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
|
|
Disqus comments
Other comments
*sob*sob* So sad to have missed Ben’s first gig. Was it recorded?
Hmm. Would love to read over the talk, but mabey not blog material if its too long… perhaps just stick it somewhere else and link to it, so those that want to can go read it?
Matt