The Father

Today is my fathers birthday! (It is also Megan's) He is 46, which makes him 26 years older than me. I think it would be fair to say that there is no one on this entire planet who is more like me than my Dad is, or probably, no one who I am more like.. he did come first therefore I am probably a model of him rather than the other way round. My Dad is my hero. When I was little he used to take me on camps with him occasionally and they are some of my favourite memories. More recently I have been helping him run/lead some camps and that has been even greater fun!
Dad was always larger than life. 6ft2in tall and built this is fairly obvious but more than just his physical presence he was always doing crazy awesome things like abseiling, bridge swinging, hiking, canoeing, and playing sport. I think he will always be in my head the immensely strong man who cared for, protected and loved me as a four year old kid.
I did not always acknowledge the level of respect I have for my father, though I think it's always been not far from the surface, and in my early teenage years we argued and fought a lot, mostly because I was vocal and ignorant (funny how they go together) and knew exactly how to push Dads buttons. As I said, we are very alike and so winding him up came naturally for me. Winding people up in general seems to be a gift of mine, however, while mostly this is a humorous trait when it came to Dad it often lacked the funny side and was more about me being counter-dependant for the sake of it.
To my great relief, I grew up a little and the respect for Dad surfaced once more. He is where I turn when I need advice, when I need help, when I have questions, and when I need money ;P He is the person I admire most in this world and he is who I model myself on, the standard against which I measure myself. I would be very happy at the end of my life if I could say nothing more than that I measured up to my Dad.
I know that Dad is getting older. Something brought into focus by my own age, which worries me so add 26 on top... And I also know that, like me, he feels younger than he is and does not like some of the changes that time is bringing. They are different changes for each of us but the affect seems to be fairly similar. Change happens and there is not much we can do about it, but to try and hold on to the past will only make it worse, it's something I'm learning to let go of and to be satisfied with where I'm at and even await the changes that the Lord will bring in me in time.. with hope. I pray the same for Dad and have a feeling that with 26 extra years of wisdom he might just!
I love you Dad. Happy Birthday!

Inadequate

I stepped up today, and I found myself completely and utterly inadequate. I stepped back down, my gut wrenching, and turned away in shame. I want to be so much more than I am. I want to take the opportunities that come along. I want to be worthy of the opportunities that come along. Tonite, I fear I was not. Now I am sad. Sad that I failed. Sad that I couldn't help. Sad that someone should even be in pain in the first instance.
That is all.

iWeb

There's a fairly consistent theme to my existence for the last couple of weeks that can be summed up: knackered. Having said that I found it surprisingly easy [not to be confused with actually easy] to get to Risboro for 8am this morning. The strange amount of energy followed me through the day and so I came home this afternoon actually able to speak, smile, laugh and stand. Normally Thursday evening sees me crawl through the door and go hide in my room. It made a nice change.
Have been designing things on iWeb. I think I finally hit a breakthrough this evening on the new website [due to replace the blogspot post haste] but encountered almost immediately an infinitely more expert problem. The program is fairly simple, indeed if you just want to fill in the template it's a piece of cake, but I had some more creative dreams and ideas and only really started to progress when I gave up trying to integrate my ideas with the existing templates and just went nuts. My present challenge lies in trying to match the four colours in a photo [the quartered album style photo that sits at the top of my sidebar in fact] with a back ground colour in the program. Anyone who has any ideas or can tell me what the colours are called or where I can find said information on t'internet shall receive a boon of great worth.*
I'm going to watch a movie and go to bed. Peace Out.

The Blessing of the Lord

Had a crazy weekend. Friday nite was drop in, which went really well. There's a new basketball court that's just been built on the field and there were stacks of kids out so we managed to get quite a good game going. I played some great three on three against Sam, our massive black dude who towers over the ring, and pretty much scores every time he gets the ball. It was good to play with some guys who know how to play and I played the best basketball I've played in a lot of years.
Couldn't sleep Friday nite and ended up on the fone to a friend at three in the morning, something that I paid for dearly the next morning when I had to get up at 8 to get a bus to Wheatley so I could go down to help at the Corfe Mullen Festival. The festival was good except that Guy and I were both shattered and were fading towards the end. They stuck us on a train back to Oxford and we pulled out our laptops to plan the Internship lesson we've only had two months warning to get ready for (taught it today!) and worked most of the way home.
We got off the platform at Oxford with a pair of headaches and some serious BO between us and started trudging back to Iffley road. And then the Lord did pour out onto us his mighty blessing upon us. Every traffic crossig we came to changed to green on our approach (there were approximately twelve of these consecutive changes on the trudge home), then Guy turned to me and said "You know what would be crazy but awesome right now?" to which I replied "Getting Krispy Kremes" great minds... So we make a slight detour to Krispy Kremes praying all the while that the Lord will extend the normal opening hours past 7pm (a deadline that had already past) and shower us with donuts. It turns out that Krispy Kremes stays open until 8 on saturdays! In we strolled and ordered a dozen assorted donuts and then as we were paying for them one of the girls behind the counter asked us if we'd like a free dozen donuts. We walked out of Krispy Kremes with no less than 24 donuts and renewed spirits. As we stepped onto the road outside KK's without even pausing, the traffic lights turned green for us.
We finished the nite eating Guys magical pasta bake and donuts and drinking tea while watching the Ilse of Wight music festival on TV and receiving wondrous neck rubs from one of our friends. Insanely, I managed to hold out til 2am to see Muse and Kasabian play before we all crashed out.
Sunday was a Day of rest, none of us waking up until after twelve and then going shopping in Oxford and walking round the university parks and chatting. A very chilled afternoon was spent at Iffley road before I headed home from what had become a great weekend despite seeming like hell on saturday morning.

Wind Up

Had an entertaining time this arvo winding Heth up. It culminated in a magical series of pranks when she dropped me home. First I refused to get out the car, she couldn't make me, she tried pretty hard too. Then I got out the car and took her bag with me, which she wouldn't have noticed had I not slung it over my shoulder as I walked away (so she wouldn't drive off without her wallet and fone) and then waited round the corner for the good three minutes it took her to realise I wasn't coming back with it to come find me and chase me round the drive until she realised her bag was under the car. I then got in the drivers seat of her car and locked the doors. After teasing her for a couple of minutes James showed up and I started talking to him through the slit in the window I'd opened, completely ignoring Heth who was getting more and more annoyed (should mention that she couldn't stop laughing either, I generally end the game when the other person no longer finds it funny) I eventually let her have her car back, leaving her with three minutes to get to Risboro, did I mention she was on her way out?
Finished up the evening with the boys watching Jackass 2, funnily enough at the same place as Heth who was upstairs watching the disgrace that is "The Pursuit of Happiness" which I have refused to watch on the basis that it reeks of soppy cheese and a moral of "everything will be ok" ...utter rubbish. Jackass 2 was not as good as the first one, more sickening stupidity this time round, altho there were some quality stunts. One guy held on to the end of a dangling fire hose which was turned on full blast and went nuts, and Johnny Knoxville set up a brilliant gag with a note on a wall that had an extendable boxing glove behind it!

Games in the Woods

Had a BBQ up Wendover Woods this arvo. Was really really good. Nice and chilled, played "golf" with the lads while we thought the girls were doing the BBQ ("Golf" involves getting a random selection of rugby's, football's, tennis ball's and vortex's and improvising with trees and signs and benches and basically anything you can find to make a golf course and you then use your ball to navigate the course in as few shots as possible, the winner then designs the next hole. Brilliantly simple and loads of fun) having played the front ten (needed an even nimber so our swapping of the balls would be fair) we returned to find a smoking heap of coals on the BBQ that the gorls informed us had been on fire approximately three times and had died out an equal number of times and in the course of all of this no one had thought to cook any food. A more accurate summary is probably that the girls squirted a load of lighter fluid on the BBQ and waited until it died down before repeating the process. Pete resurrected a fire from the pile of smoking coal, accompanied by a worrying comment from the girls "aren't you meant to put the kindling on top of the coals?" No, you're definitely not meant to do that, and no, you will never be touching the fire again. (Harsh but fair) We managed to cook some grub and set about eating it, this process deteriorated into an hilarious food fight after about half an hour and ended with Matt in a considerable amount of trouble with his girlfriend who he had tipped off the bench and then poured water over, from my end this was perhaps the funniest part of the nite but I can understand it was probly less amusing for her.
This fun was followed up by a game of rugby before we hid under some trees as the rain started, Heth chose this moment to pull out the cake, not bad timing really, just a little different to normal and then we sat about chatting until the rain went away and we finished with a game of ultimate vortex (like ultimate frisbee but with a vortex) The fun really started on the way out the woods, the gates are locked at nine so we had a curfew and this presented opportunity for mischief! As we got to the gate I jumped out and went to close it on Pauls car behind us, the gate was padlocked to a post, which presented little issue as I simply ripped it out the ground and dragged it along too (ok, so someone had obviously dug it out earlier, was still pretty funny) letting them through I put the pole back in the ground and turned to find the rotten sods had both driven off without me! I ran down the road and Paul drove back up to find me and then I hid in the back seat as he drove past the others and made like he hadn't been able to find me, leaving them trying to work out where I actually was. This kicked off an awesome (read: dangerous) trip home, the highlight of which was probly Paul deciding to follow Ian round the roundabout twice at the last second, jerking his Jag back onto the circle and sending Jenny sliding across the back seat into me very much like a cartoon! (Neither Jenny or I had managed to work out the seat belts in the back and so weren't strapped in, after we stopped laughing we put some effort into figuring them out and securing ourselves)
Now I'm home and rather sleepy, so I shall chip to bed.

Worlds End

Yesterday was Pirates day. I took the church youth to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3, dressed as Pirates. Not totally unheard of, especially in recent times, but for going to an Aylesbury cinema it was a fairly daring and courageous move. (Especially from Matt and I whose outfits came largely from Lucy's wardrobe and were wearing eye liner that made us look like a pair of VERY gay pirates) Before heading to see the third movie we watched the first two movies at Matts place. I'd been planning this for a while and it was good fun, but my enjoyment was marred by a sodding cold, a headache (probly due to the cold), and feeling very drained from a big week and the cold and just really wanting to sleep. The third movie was somewhat predictable, I managed to pick most of the plot twists but still enjoyed them and the fight scenes were quality so I really enjoyed it all in all.
The huge week is now done, just church and a bbq tomoro and life goes back to normal after a rather different week.