It's been a while since I bothered writing about anything probably cos I've been so busy with work but mostly cos I lost interest (see Doogle's blog also - last post Mat 2007). That's probably the kind of talk that can get me booted off blogger.com. So anyway these last few weeks have been orsm! I never usually do much with my holidays apart from catch up on work or stuff around at home. However Liz and Sarah Nelson came over from the States and made my life a whole lot more fun! We've been out on about four daytrips (as precursors to our big roadtrip coming up this Friday) and it's been a blast! We started out hanging out the Sunday they got back and hung out all day, taking a bike trip up to Forrester Park and finding this kudos little bike track which came complete with jumps, turns and obstacles (or trees).
The second daytrip took us out on a trip to the Catlins which the girls had no idea about location-wise. We voyaged round Purekanui Falls and went on a walk down to Cathedral Caves but the latter journey was halted by rough seas. Ushj!
Our third trip was out to Middlemarch which had been recommended to Liz by someone. However when they got there they were sorely disappointed to find a "quaint" country town with very little attraction. So we decided to head to St Bathans which lead us on a walk round the rocks with some random dog which followed us the whole time. Or rather I should say he guided us cos he was the one that led the march. Sarah named him Richard for no apparent reason.
Our fourth daytrip was on Jon's birthday where we drove out to the end of the Peninsula and discovered some fortifications that had been built during WWII. I thought it was going to be one little slab of concrete but it turned out to have a network of tunnels which were really kudos. After this we headed out onto the wench Emancipation trail which took us and the girls to Warrington's back beach and into some pretty exciting dune jumping. We ended the day by going to Truby King reserve and joining in on all the photo opportunities from the past 7 years (Aargh! 7 years???) I was later criticised by Graham Beck for taking the girls out to these places as it defeated the purpose of a wench emancipation but I explained to him that these girls were totally worthy of coming on this trip because they were the coolest girls who had come along in a long time.
So, the only thing left is the roadtrip and eternal ushjness that they'll be leaving. We were told in class today to plan our ideal day. Well, after these orsm days of hanging out with the girls my perfect day would have to be taking a flight to Boise, Idaho. Yeehaw!

Prince Caspian

And so it ends. The drama season is over. Prince Caspian is no more. I'm sorted relieved but at the same time gutted. The show was a lot easier than uni. There were set tasks to complete and we got lots of applause and praise for them. And now I have no major procrastination tools left. However I will give you a rundown of the play's progress which might use up some more time. On opening night I managed to inadverdantly knock over one of the triangles by leaving it too far in front of the curtain. It fell down and knocked three others over in a grand domino effect. It was all very dramatic and embarrassing for opening night but I got over it pretty quick. Or as you can imagine everyone saw it as a joke. The second night Phil (Sopespian) got jabbed in the eye when Jamie (Caspian) stuffed up the sword fight with him. Well it wasn't exactly his eye but blood did come pouring out of his eyebrow. We had to carry on as if he was supposed to do it. After this we had a string of kid's performances which were heaps of fun. A lot of people began competing for cheers and laughs especially Chris Caradus who spat on stage each night after the main battle scene in order to get cheers but only got jeers. On the last nights everything went relatively well apart from when the cord for the arch, which was supposed to be lowered down by me every night, snapped and hung dangerously above Dr Cornelius's head. We finished on Saturday night with an afterparty in the green room where people brought along food and drinks. So... what to do now. Mum and dad, you still have to give a better excuse than the one you have. Not in the country has been used on numerous birthdays and major life events for me. But I'm sure Erina can lend you the vid, if she made one that is.

Phases

While reading through my dad's blog I was "fascinated" to come across his experiences in visiting worm farms. It's a pretty odd thing to be interested in but it made me realise that in all these years that we've joking about mum going through her different interest phases that's dad's been subtlely doing the same thing! However mum's ones are funnier and I can remember them better so I'm gonna go through and list some of the interest phases that mum has been through:

• Fishing - this lasted for years and mum would constantly find time to take us down to the wharf and jump on charter boats for weekend trips with church friends.


• Where's Wally jigsaws - they were fun but once you've found Wally there's not much left to do.


• The abflex - I must admit I have a similar thing sitting in my dining room which I borrowed off Stef and never used.


• Making earrings with Beryl Young - Beryl ruined this by moving away. Beryl!


• The infamous exercycle - which now sits in the lounge taking up room.


• Wheat bags - these things helped soothe sore muscles and smelt great out of the microwave.


• Oxycise - a form of exercise where breathing is the main ingredient for losing weight. This was by far the dorkiest phase/form of exercise I have ever seen. Mum and dad still swear by it, though.


• Renovating - this is less of a phase, more of a sudden urge to tear down a wall and replace it with something different. All in all mum and dad have renovated the entire house, room by room, over the last twenty years and managed to get it down quicker than a lot of other families, while still having time for other people's houses.


• Renovating other people's houses - whether they wanted it or not!


• Photo making - mum would compete vigorously with Jenny Beck to make the best and fanciest photo albums.


• Photography - after years of taking photo classes, building up the family albums and using a perfectly good camera mum's dreams were shattered by the onset of the digital age. This camera still sits in the attic where I'm not allowed to use it despite the fact it hasn't been used for years.


• Real estate - buying flats and renovating them out seemed to be a phase for about 10 years with Craigleith St in NEV and Stef's house in Mornington. I still remember getting $40 for helping paint at Craigleith St which I immediately spent on GI Joes! Awesome.


• Bonzi trees - one of the phases that dad had that I can remember. Fortunately we weren't told to rearrange our rooms due to bad feng shui.


• Collages - Jon and I were intrigued to find a collection of special things that dad had hung onto a sheet and stuck on the wall. Maybe I just don't understand art.

I'm sure there's lot more than this but this is all I can think of at the moment. I'll have to compile a bunch of these phases for mum's 60th and get people to act out oxycising.

One week in Heaven

I'm gonna be a teacher! Well, that's as long as I study hard next year and pass the course this year but, in terms of having a space in the Graduate Primary Degree, I have it! These are very exciting times. It's taken me a good three years of uni with a break in the middle (which I suppose is normal for any student of any degree) I had my interview on Thursday which I didn't think had gone very well. They battered me with questions and I gave them ambiguous responses, which looking back, didn't really answer the questions that closely at all. So after some intense praying and plenty of stressing God has responded to my prayers, and fortunately for me, it's in a way that allows me to do teaching! This week has been rather fruitful in spiritual terms. I've been questioning ideas of God and throwing ideas about Christianity back and forth between friends and flatmates so I've been constantly thinking about how to better myself. Tonight Mal and I discussed what we wanted to see happen next year in the flat and we realised an integral part of it was finding someway to incorporate, draw in and/or invite non-Christians. So this week has been more of a growing experience rather than a stress. In fact the stress has been quite minimal. Anyway, it's weird not having mum and dad around. I especially noticed it today when Bro and Louise weren't there either at church. In other news I found out yesterday that my old school friend Andrew McGregor had been killed in a car accident. It left me in a sort of state of shock the whole day. It's still rather hard to believe and I don't envy his sister who had the job of ringing everyone up and having to tell them. Major ushj.

One Week in Hell

This next week is going to majorly ushj or completely awesome, or a mixture of both. Firstly I'm waiting on my student allowance to come back. I still need to hand in things for this which weren't specified in the form. Secondly there's the LCQ form I need to sign and return for my liquor licence which, if not returned soon, will not be refundable and will mean my licence will be null and void. Thirdly I had the Teacher's College interview today which went averagely and they'll be telling me whether I get in or not. In other words, if all go badly I lose my job, a potential flat, my other source of income and my career. Stressful week. So I'm praying that somehow these are all going to come back positively but I've no idea. All I can do is rely on God that I haven't stuffed things up too majorly so far.

Drama

From kid's time pirate to Narnian arisocratic lord the last few weeks have seemed to be filled with drama. However the real drama has come from a surprising source. Recently, in the last month or so Malcolm, Greg and I have been interested in trying to apply for the Ten Gables flats with a group of people. At first Greg approached me and said he thought God was telling him to move in with a flat of people. Amazingly that same day when I mentioned to Malcolm that I was thinking about applying for Ten Gables he said he had had the same idea on his mind. He told me that ever since the sermon Trev gave a month ago on building a youth community (as an alternative to the hall/drinking culture) that he had been keen to try and get some DCBC people into the flats. Over the next couple of weeks I figured Mal and Greg had been constantly communicating between each other because their ideas were so similar. Turns out they hadn't (which could be seen as evidence of God at work). Anyway, a couple of weeks later Mal thought the best way to organise to get people together would be to announce it in church that he had a plan to get people together into the Ten Gables flat. Naturally we got some responses but what we weren't expecting was a wave of criticism. Turns out the current occupants of Ten Gables thought they were being kicked out and that the church was backing a group of 15 DCBCers to move into Ten Gables. This was far from the truth. In fact, at the end of a year all residents and wannabe flatters have to apply to make the system fair. I think the current occupants, who consists of people from a range of different churches from around Dunners, figured the DCBC admin was flexing its muscles and booting people out when in actual fact our group has to apply in flats of five anyway so it was quite the contrary and completely fair. Anyway, there's apparently been plenty of criticism of DCBC goers and some of us in general and poor old Dave Lawrie has copped a lot of flack for it all. So now we're just applying and hoping to get in so we can run a home group and have the flats as a social drop in centre nice and close to church. If it doesn't work out though we'll obviously try and take it somewhere else. Unfortunately that's been causing more problems; trying to find a place if we don't get in. Anyway, it's up to God now. We'll just have to pray this is what he wants.


As a side note here's some photos from my recent activity as a pirate in Orbit (kid's time) and our fun with swords in Prince Caspian.

Back by popular demand

Well the last couple of months have been interesting. At the start of June I began my Prince Caspian practices for the play that starts in September (I already have a free ticket for you Beverly Anne). So it's been nothing but fun. The other night Chris Caradus and I were waiting for our scene so we had some free time. Immediately we begun talking about what swords to use and jumped on trademe finding some very appropriate but expensive swords for the play. We've now choreogrpahed all our fighting scenes but we need the actual swords we're going to use in order to know how to fight with them, weight wise.
Uni's been quite kudos too. I've begun my last semester and have been working away to try and get better marks than last semester. So I've been studying for my Irish essay and also for my Education essay in order to get them out of the way before the play begins.
In terms of work I have been booking jobs less and less because I apparently haven't been using the right attitude over the phone. I was accused of being too apathetic at times and other times being too much of an overseller. I guess they don't understand that trying to sell insect control to people who don't want it in the middle of winter can doesn't inspire the best in me. So last week after a solid week of improving my stats and renewing my interest in telemarketing I was called into the office and given a big bark at, followed by a written warning which I thought was totally unnecessary. So now I'm looking at either quitting or being booted out of this job. Can't say I'd mind either way. Hmm, maybe I should jump before I'm pushed. As long as I can get my student allowance going I'll be happy to be out of it and spending more time at uni.
Night church has been going really kudosly for a while now. We've had a keen interest in constructing an alternative culture to what the world offers, and as part of the leadership team on Sunday nights it's been fun fostering that vision. We've had a couple of new social groups rise up as part of that so it's been very kudos. I should mention that being part of the night church leadership team consists of throwing ideas around, organising social events, MCing and running parts of the service as well as having just being appointed the new welcome team leader. I was inaugurated last week. It's a very prestigous position. Ok, it's not, but it is kudos to be running some of the events at church.
A few of us went down to the Gore Ball too a couple of weeks ago. There was me, Jon and Scotty ad Gemma, Monica and Lis so we all alternated the dances with each other and had an awesome time. Despite the fact Scotty spent a lot of his time talking to his yobbos he still said he danced the most he ever had before at the Ball because he didn't need to ask a new girl each time. Instead he could pick from the group we already had. It was really kudos and everyone got into it so that was a high.
We also just had a camp for Realise where we went away and discussed the way Jesus treated people, who he was and what he said. It was an awesome camp. I have lots of photos on ringo.com so go check them out there if you're a member. I organised the main game for Saturday: the wide game 'Capture the Flag'. We used my kudos tshirts as prizes and also as flags to capture so it was heaps of fun.
So that's the last two months summed up. I'll try to keep this up to date now that I know I have such a strong fan base. PS: I've put photos of the main things I've mentioned above.