/karen/

Night (re)cap

Sunday, 07 October, 2007

Thursday 27/9/07

I spent most of the day working on Briefing stuff and managed to get through everything on my To Do List by lunch. So in the afternoon I started on some of the other Briefing editing that wasn't on my To Do list. Given it was a 3,000-word article, I didn't get it finished by 5:30, but decided to leave it.

Ben and I went to dinner at the Tea Inn on Anzac Parade (Ben doesn't think the food is that good there). Then we drove to the Entertainment Quarter in Moore Park to go to Cinema Paris where the Reel Asia film festival was taking place, and we watched both Death Note movies back to back. They were quite beautifully shot and I thought the acting was good. I especially liked how “L” was portrayed—eyes continually unfocused, constantly eating all these sweet things, sucking his thumb, etc. And I liked how they transferred much of the artwork of the original manga into the CGI for the death gods. The plot was quite gripping: you don't know whether you want Light to get away with it or to get caught, and much of the enjoyment of the film comes from watching the Light and “L” trying to outwit each other. But even though the ethical dilemmas were interesting, the film (and the manga) didn't take the ethics far enough. There was no discussion about why it's wrong to kill criminals or why it's wrong to take justice into your own hands. There were no reasons given for why human life is important (the Bible gives the answer that it's because humans are made in the image of God), and why taking the lives of others is such a serious thing (and the Bible says it's because God is ultimately the one who will dispense justice as he alone is impartial enough to judge fairly). There were times when the plot lagged somewhat, and I think the ending of the second movie could have done with a serious edit, but despite these quibbles, I quite enjoyed both films. (It was rather strange hearing the Red Hot Chili Peppers singing over the credits when all the dialogue was in Japanese!)

Friday 28/9/07

Because we got home so late the night before, I was rather tired at work—tired and very stressed as this was the day when I had to do all the new Briefing stuff for the October issue—putting links into the e-Briefing, uploading it to the online store, putting the text into the store, putting the information into the new Briefing site, sending out the Briefing e-news, realising that the new site was going to cause problems for the old site when it went live, snapping at Ben as a result of it ...

I also met with Elsie at 9 am and it was Friday Thai Day plus I had to leave at 2:30 for my doctor's appointment. So it was all getting a bit crazy. But I did manage to finish on time and get to the doctor's on time, where I sat reading trashy magazines and not understanding what was so great about what the celebrities wear and why I'd want to wear it myself. Unfortunately the doctor was running really late—like an hour late—so I was very jumpy when she finally got to see me. She gave me my test results: apparently I'm allergic to dust mites, cats and grass pollen (grass pollen?!) and my blood pressure was better so she said take one of the pills she prescribed for the vertigo. My cholesterol is also at 5.5 so she wants me to go on a low-fat diet for three months, then see her again. And then I had to go.

I called my counsellor to say I'd be late, then drove frantically to West Ryde. In the end, I was only 10 minutes late instead of 20 like I'd feared. After counselling, I drove back to Kingsford to pick Ben up. He'd launched the new Briefing site! Hurray!

We drove home, had a quick dinner, changed and caught the train in to Town Hall to walk to Star City (all the while I scribbled on small bits of paper my presentation for Word by Word). Their website assured me it was a “short walk” but it most certainly was not! Perhaps we should have taken the Light Rail instead. Oh well, it was good exercise. But it meant we were a little late and the Lyric Theatre foyer was swarming with people. We did manage to locate my mum and Peter, and bought a program (which was quite expensive for a show program: $20—my mum paid for half because I ran out of money) and then took our seats in the stalls. The seats were very comfy and had lots of leg room so you didn't have to stand up to let someone pass, but the décor was rather odd.

I was the only one who had seen Miss Saigon before (when I was in Year 11 or Year 12, and it was at the Capitol Theatre. I went with Carolyn and we got bumped up into the stalls from dress circle because a cruise ship had failed to dock on time so there was a big cancellation). This production wasn't as good—the singing was competent but not brilliant and it certainly didn't bring out the emotion and drama as much as the other, the acting was poor (I kept wanting to slap both Chris and Kim), and often the singers didn't seem to be keeping time with the orchestra. But it's a depressing musical anyway—the music is okay (well, Ben thought it was dreadful but I don't mind it) and I still think they fall in love too fast, and I wonder whether the helicopter scene (which, in this production, was fabulous—a great use of CGI) should be moved to Act 1 because then you'd sympathise a little more with them instead of being indifferent to their fate. All the same, I was glad I don't live in a war-torn country and that I get to live with the person I love instead of wondering whether or not he is still alive.

Afterwards, my mum and Peter dropped us home and we went to bed exhausted.

Saturday 29/9/07

I was up early to shower and write the rest of my presentation. We set off a little later than planned but still got there in time to open everything up and let people in. We were a small group at Word by Word—probably because of the long weekend. Ben did a devotion on Psalm 89 and Guan got us to do a writing exercise on time which was rather interesting. Then Maheesha, Bec, Guan and I presented on our current projects. It was interesting to see what we were all working on and how it's shaping up. We lost writing time because we went overtime. Then it was lunch—which we went and ate in the park. Then I made everyone do writing time (more because I needed it—I needed some time to work on my talk for the Jesus in Cyberspace seminar I was giving at Campus Bible Study Arts Core at Elsie's invitation). Then Guan and Bec workshopped their stuff and we watched the short film that Guan was involved in writing (it's going to be shown at Ignite!) and we ended up finishing a little later than usual.

We were all pretty stuffed. Guan had very generously agreed to let us come over to his house and hang out for the afternoon, so Ben, Ben M, Guan and I all headed over there and spent a couple of hours playing Guitar Hero. (Ben picked it up fairly quickly but kept getting thrown by the fact that what he had to play often didn't match what he heard in the music.)

I had totally forgotten about the time when Guan said, “Shouldn't we be leaving now ...?” We piled into the car and headed up to Randwick Ritz to buy tickets and wait for Jess, Matt and Karen. Then we went for dinner at Arthur's around the corner (very yummy pizza but it was very loud in there because the sound echoed off the walls and floor) and then to Sugar Plum for dessert. Bec met us at the cinema closer to the screening time, and we all piled in and found a row to sit in and watched Stardust.

And I must say, I enjoyed it very much. There were several points where I wondered, “Why did they do that?”, I thought the showdown ending was a little much (and I didn't like how they changed Gaiman's final ending), and some of the pacing lagged in places, but apart from that, Charlie Cox and Claire Danes were great (Cox in particular cleaned up rather nicely once his hair grew!), Michelle Pfeiffer was deliciously terrifying as the witch, Robert De Niro made a rather charming pirate, and the sets and costumes were fabulous (I now want a blue dress like the one Claire Danes wears). The worst part was the music over the closing credits: who decided on Take That??? (You can get some nice wallpapers here.)

We dropped Ben M to his car and Guan to his house, then drove home and tumbled into bed quite exhausted.

Sunday 30/9/07

We slept in until 11 or 1 the following day, and watched Law and Order and So You Think You Can Dance? (well, I watched that one, not Ben!) I tried to do some stuff on the computer and didn't get far. Then it was time for band practice, then church, then supper, then helping with the FEVA mailout. Because it was a public holiday, a bunch of us went to Cinque in Newtown for coffee after that which was a lot of fun. Then it was back home to sleep.

Monday 1/10/07

Labour Day public holiday, but I was still up by 9:30 and spent the entire day trying to write my talk for Jesus in Cyberspace which should have been easy but I chouldn't concentrate. My brain just refused to function so I ended up wasting a lot of time. I made chicken risoni for dinner, watched Law & Order and then got started on the talk. I stopped at about 1:30 in the morning. I hadn't finished but it was time to go to sleep.

Tuesday 2/10/07

I decided to sleep in and got to work at 9:30. I kept working on the talk (this was a work-approved thing so I was allowed to) and printed the outlines. At 1, I set out for UNSW with my black parasol, stopping at the post office on the way. I also went to the UNSW Bookshop to buy George a birthday present because I didn't think I'd get to see her before her birthday. Then I went hunting for a card but the Quad Store was curiously card-less, so I wrote on the back of a flier advertising a seminar on Christopher Hitchens. I went to see George and give her her present, then rushed up to Morven Brown to give my presentation. I brought previous issues of The Page which everyone took, plus copies of the current Briefing to give out. There were about 10-12 people there, including Elsie, Dan and Tara. It went down pretty well and they asked me good questions. I hope it inspires them to use the skills they acquire from studying Arts and Social Sciences to write out of service of God and his kingdom. The talk also gave me a feel for how it will go when I have to give it for Christians in the Media in a couple of weeks' time. I realised there were a couple of things I wanted to say which I didn't get to say so I'll add them in later.

I walked back to work, stopping on the way to fill my prescription for the pills which are supposed to stop the vertigo. The lady who served me pointed out that the pills may cause dizzines and I thought what's the point of that since the pills are supposed to stop dizziness? How do you know if they're working? (And I've taken a few and they've been okay but the problem still seems to keep coming back so perhaps I will wait a bit longer, and if that doesn't work, go see the ear specialist my doctor reccommended. It's not very serious though.) I also stopped at Kare Bear and got some Hello Kitty stickers but Elsie says they're probably fakes.

Back at work, I felt really overwhelmed but tried to take things one step at a time, dealing with Briefing correspondence, doing changes to the Proverbs Pathway Bible Guide and sending an edited Briefing article off to an author for approval. I left at 6 pm and went to Elsie's and she gave me books that had been left at her place by previous tenants (which I promptly put on Bookmooch) and some old clothes she didn't want anymore.

Then I drove straight to church. They were running late with dinner but it was an unusual evening anyway because we were doing mission stuff. I ended up helping Judith with the rest of the FEVA mailout, then brainstorming apologetic stuff for the brochure we want to put together. I also finished these Seaside gloves for myself (in shortened form) in black merino wool (leftover from the gloves I made Sarah T). I had just enough yarn. It was getting pretty late (around 10 pm) and I had a headache and wanted to go home, so we went home.

Wednesday 3/10/07

I was so glad it was my day off again. I woke up at 8:30, had a shower and ate breakfast. Naomi came around at 9:30 and we started doing our tax. She finished in about half an hour and I hadn't quite started yet! I was doing the laundry and printing out things. I finally got stuck into it but didn't finish by the time she had to leave at 12. It took another two hours or so after that, but at least it was mostly done. I spent the rest of the afternoon converting over the old article archive into the new site and putting together The Daily Reading Bible (Volume 13) once my internet connection failed.

At 6 pm I caught the train into the city to meet my friends from school for dinner. I was late: I was supposed to be there at 6 but somehow had gotten it into my head that it was 6:30. We went to Casa Asturiana for dinner and had tapas. Liwen joined us later. The food was all right but I got the feeling the waiters wanted to move us out of there, while we kept sitting and chatting for hours and hours. We left at about 10-10:30 and I caught the train home, but it was going via the City Circle so it took twice as long.

Thursday 4/10/07

Back at work, I was looking at one thing on the website and then finding all these things which were wrong and needing fixing urgently. So I spent most of my day doing that and getting cranky about it because I had a whole stack of Briefing things to do and I was running out of time to do them—especially as we were due to go to layout on Friday morning. I was supposed to give the devotion at staff meeting but of course I hadn't done it (being so busy with so many other things) so we just read Proverbs 25 and talked about it. I left at 4, drove home and did more stuff with the old archive before we left to go to Judith's for dinner with her and Fish. And we watched So You Think You Can Dance? (and wasn't Lauren and Neil's dance just fabulous? Wade Robson is awesome!) and then the season premier of Heroes (which I'm still not liking very much).

Friday 5/10/07

At work I finished editing the last article and the Bible Brief (which needed text for the introduction and prayer). Ben came bearing sushi at about 12:30 so we shared that for lunch, along with a very ripe avocado and an apple. I met with Elsie to read the Bible and pray, and then finished off as much of the Briefing stuff as I could and sent it off to our designer. At 3, I left to go to counselling, then drove back to pick up Ben. He dropped me at home, then set off about half an hour later to visit Luke. So I had the evening to myself! I cooked myself vegie stir fry for dinner, watched four episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3 (thank you, Matt!) which included the only Buffy episode I had ever seen prior to Matt lending me the series (“Beauty and the Beasts”), did the dishes, started sorting out the pile of paper on my desk, and went to bed reading The Mummy's Curse, the other manga I won during Free Comic Book Day (it's not that good). I fell asleep before Ben came home.

Saturday 6/10/07

It was our first weekend off in ages and I was quite determined to keep it free. There was a church prayer breakfast on but I said to Ben we'd only go if he wanted to since the free weekend was for him to enjoy some of the holiday time he had missed while we were in Hong Kong. We ended up sleeping in a little, then going for a walk to Lewisham to visit Corban and Blair store and the secondhand CD store. But they were both shut. It was a stinking hot day so I had smothered myself in suncream and I had my black parasol. We ended up walking back via New Canterbury Road through Petersham, and as we walked along, we spotted Mark Da Costa from Australian Idol (he had just been kicked out of the competition), and went to say hi to a girl from church in her shop. We had lunch in Petersham, then walked home, waving to people from church we just happened to meet on the street.

Hans had just dropped off the bookcase he didn't need any more so we moved it inside and put it in the guest room (which is getting narrower and narrower!) Then we spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning Ben's study—dusting, vacuuming (the vacuum cleaner accidentally swallowed our Phillips head screwdriver, but when we opened the bag to retrieve it, all we found was a bread knife!), throwing out stuff, rearranging stuff and putting his college notes into some sort of semblance of order. The place looked so much better once we'd finished with it. It even made me want to go clean up my computer area (which, in comparison, looked like a bomb had gone off in it).

We had leftover for dinner and spent the evening watching the week's TV (Law & Order, The Simpsons and Numb3rs) and then Constantine (which I thought was just terrible—not because of Rachel Weisz or Keanu Reeves who I thought were okay, but because of the script and direction). Afterwards we read and I finished off The Mummy's Curse and resolved to put it on my Bookmooch inventory.

Sunday 7/10/07

I woke later than intended but then I was so tired. I showered and had breakfast, then Ben and I went shopping for various bits and pieces that weren't grocery shopping. We got a fair amount of stuff from Officeworks (which felt very GTD-ish and geeky)—folders, file boxes, magazine holders, hole punchers, etc. I even got a frame which can hold suspension files (I'm using it as a sort of vertical “In”-tray and “Out”-tray). We came home for lunch and I watched So You Think You Can Dance? again on fast forward (and revised my opinion of Pasha and Sara's West Coast Swing dance) plus the season premiere of House (and I missed the last 15 minutes because I forgot to change the tape on the VCR).

I spent the rest of the afternoon updating my Bookmooch inventory and putting CDs in to my computer, then I walked to church (yes, I'm trying to do more exercise!) The seats had all been set up in a curve around the front (Ben called it “Gold Class”). Ben was leading and drumming. He also interviewed me in a way that reviewed Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis). Malcolm preached evangelistically on Acts 16 and afterwards they put up the rest of the stuff for mission outside the church. I have to admit, when they said they were going to do what they were going to do, I was highly sceptical, but when I saw the finished result, I became a believer. Drive by our church and take a look!

Okay, I've been blogging pretty much since I got home and I need to go to bed now. Goodnight!

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