New Years Eve

It's just turned New Years Eve on my clock, last day of the year!! May have to do something to mark the occasion... Went up to Bicester Village to try and get some shoes today, came back drenched and annoyed at the lack of quality in shoes, Im going to Oxford next week instead, I did find an awesome Fat Face outlet tho and got £105 worth of gear for under 40 quid!! (Also picked up a nifty knife/screw driver/pliers/and loads of other things gadget from Tog24 v cheap as well) But no shoes...
Down loaded the photos I took in London the other day. Just spent 20mins trying to upload them to blogger with no joy. Ill try again later... Photos now appear to be working =]

I never really went in for new years resolutions, they seem to be very short term ideals but I like the idea of developing healthy habits and working on personal growth and have been working on something vaguely similar from the book "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey (who is a man of remarkable genius considering he belongs to the Church of Moron or whatever its called) ANYWAY, what I was leading to had absolutely nothing to do with any of that, but is a cartoon by Leunig which I quite like:

Happy Christmas

The last few days have been great. Last Thursday saw the end of work and the start of the Christmas break, which was celebrated in the form of Xtreme 16!! The Bish, Luce, Heath and I organised a day in a cross style between a day trip and Dads Cool School Race Camp. Best bit was that the day was completely unofficial, meaning we threw health and safety out the window (after promising no-one would die) and banned all fun sheriffs (health and safety nuts) We played wide games all day in a barn and finished with an egg and flour war complete with hay bale forts... one awesome fight ensued... and dinner and a bonfire.
Friday, the Bish kidnapped four of us and took us on a road trip without telling us where we were going or what we were doing. After we got lost for the third time he told us where we were going so we could ask for directions and actually get there. We ended up in Spalding (north east England I believe) and watched a pantomime before driving back to Oxfordshire, managing to go 18 miles down the wrong motorway before we realised. All the above happened in heavy fog which had been around for three days previous (never seen anything like it before!!)
Saturday, cleaned the barn before doing Christmas shopping.
Sunday, church in the morning, christmas eve party at Lucys, midnight mass was entertaining, someone chose some weird carols so I just sang no. 18 to every song (the only line I knew was "Ding Dong Merrily on High!!", which gave Heath the giggles) and then I was tempted to put a bug I caught in the communion wine but wimped out when the bloke handed me the cup saying "the blood of Christ" ...just couldn't do it. Probably a good thing. Called home after and had a chat to the family. Went to bed at 3am for about the third nite in a row.
Monday, Christmas!!!! Slept in and was just heading out the door to catch the end of church with James when everyone else got back. Unlike normal people, the English have an unnatural tendency to open presents in the afternoon, and only once dinner is cleared away and all the men have gone for a walk around the village, it was four in the flipping afternoon before I got any presents!!! What's that about?? (was alright actually, but definitely weird) Went over Lucys for the evening and ate even more great food and exchanged presents and banter for a few hours before heading home and staying up till 3am again writing a Christmas letter.
Tuesday, Boxing Day, drove up to Derby to watch my first english football match, highlights were MacDonalds on the way there and Burger King on the way back!! I've had better matches of football dow the green, poor show, and Derby lost the match after missing about five sitters... shameful. Drove back for a much more entertaining evening at some friends place, more great food and some awesome games (see Game blog for details!! ...sometime in the next week or so anyway)
Wednesday, caught the train into London with the family (english family, not aussie one) and took a flight on the London Eye, walked over to Covent Garden for lunch at an Italian resteraunt. Stopped in Kathmandu and picked up a brilliant little L.E.D torch at half price. Did tower bridge. Checked out Tate Modern, best thing there was a tube-slide going from the 5th floor to the ground level, immediately ran all the way to the top level to have a go only to be told I needed to collect my free ticket from the ground floor to ride!! Ran all the way back down to be told by the smeg head behind the ticket desk that he wasn't issuing anymore tickets today despite not having issued one since 2 o'clock and there being almost no-one left in the building!! Ran all the way back to the top level to try and sweet talk my way onto the slide without a ticket, having failed that and finding very little I considered either "art" or "worth looking at after the disappointment of the slide", I left in disgust. From there I hot-footed it over to Oxford Street to meet up with Amy Robbo from Perth!! Hung out for a bit, saw Putney Bridge, a very very nice part of London I'd not seen before, where she's staying at the minute and then trained it all the way back to Haddenham.
Has just gone 1am and I don't know if I'll cope with another 3am nite. Time for bed me thinks.
Happy Christmas all!! Have a good one!!

Bond, James Bond

Just saw the new Bond film!! Best one I've ever seen!! Generally I don't like the Bond films at all but this one was awesome, special effects not over done, crazy stunts -there was some sweet free running in there- and just generally believable (which is rare from a Bond film) There was one torture scene which was just harsh to watch if you're a guy but Bond even manages to make a joke in there which you have to admire.
Other points of amusement in the Posse House this week is Dictionary.com's word of the day. Some words are pretty boring and I already know but the winner so far is defenestration: the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.

My Name is Mud

Day Trip is over!! It started at 7am (for me at least) yesterday morning, and ended at 9:30pm when I finally finished cleaning the St Marys Centre. The day went amazingly well, it's the middle of December which is well and truly winter here and the country has been freezing into an ice cube for the last two months but yesterday was sunny and warm and there was no wind!! (This is especially impressive as the day was next to a wind-mill and there's a definite reason they put a wind-mill on that hill!!) So God pulled out something special for us...
The day continued smoothly, kids loving it, right up until about 3 o'clock when I got a call from the Vicar in Haddenham who was rather displeased about the straw from the hay bales in the centre. Managed to apollogise and assure him that it would be cleaned and we were coming back and it would all be spotless by tomorow morning but by the time I got off the fone all the wind was gone from my sails. Hence my name is mud right now with the Vicar!!
O well, day was great so Im not too stressed.

Leunig

Last Weekend

I promised an account of last weekends trip up to Loughborough and as yet have not had a chance to give it. Briefly, here's why:
Monday- had three meetings and a mountain of day trip work before I got home, can't remember if I ate, oh wait, yes I can, Andrew was home and Rob and Barbara was out so dinner was an entertaining affair that resembled a war zone more than a dignified evening meal. From there I headed to cell and kept everyone entertained with my accent (mentioned in the post below I believe) before finalising some "negotiations" with Google and crashing out.
Tuesday- had staff meeting, then another day trip meeting, then youth cafe with the most hyper and irritating bunch of children in all of oxfordshire who decided that trying to steal everything in sight was a fun pass time, from there to Sozza's birthday party and then a loooooong "deep and meaningful" on the way home (her father ended up coming looking for her an hour and a half after we'd left, apparently this is a regular occurence from her rather protective parents, i thought it was hillarious) Then the real work started. I did not sleep Tuesday nite, but stayed up and worked all the way through.
Wednesday- I emerged at about 7am (it was still disturbingly dark with the moon v high at this point, stupid english winter) and grabbed breakfast before returning to my room to keep working. I lasted all the way to 7:30pm Wednesday nite before I crashed out for one of the best sleeps of my life.
Thursday- had to knock back an extremely tempting offer of a trip to St Andrews bookshop in favour of an all day meeting (which was entirely pointless from my end as I said nothing, did nothing and learned nothing relevant) and then taught the Circular Process of Social Interaction to a group of year 11's who are doing mentoring in a local High School. This was followed by Community Supper and then knocking back another tempting offer of a movie in favour of sleep.
Friday- Had a day trip site check and re-ordered half the day and shifted activities to suit the location, need to call the bus company again and tell them we want to change times again. Followed this with a supervisor meeting over lunch and then got stuck into more day trip work. One highlight was that I started building a games/activities database for myself and anyone who wants it, have been meaning to do this for a while. Caught the train to drop-in, second time I have used a train in England, was nice but expensive, lucky i wasn't going far. Drop-in was a good laugh and Andy was on board with the database idea straight away,
already having a similar thing himself. Caught train back from drop-in
and wrote the epic email I've been meaning to write since Tuesday, finished that about 2am and Soph started talking to me on MSN and then sent me a bunch of hillarious photos from when we were kids. One or two others from Oz warranted a chat and so I crept into bed at about 3 this morning.
Today- I am about to go Christmas shopping in Oxford and then go
bowling with some friends as a goodbye to an Aussie friend whose been
checking out the UK for the last few weeks. So really, I can't give the account of the weekend now at all... However I will, if I have any sort
of energy oor inclination I will post some photos and stories from Loughborough.

Blog Management

As I promised yesterday, a report on the weekend is coming. However the lack of sleep and "negotiations" with Google, which may be nearing an end are preventing me giving it the time it deserves. I managed to add my Google Account and change some of the blog management settings so at least my headaches with swapping between accounts may be over finally!!
Small update: am trialing a new accent after being told on the weekend that I am losing mine. The new creation is something of a mix of Scottish, Irish, Northern English, and Aussie. I quite like it and it's definitely providing everyone else with entertainment. Im giving tribute to Ians sister whose mix of 12 or so different accents, including South African and a Southern American drawl in with an Irish twang, has everyone in utter confusion constantly. Mine was vitoed at cell tonite when I used it to read the bible passage and nobody could focus on what it actually said coz they were laughing too hard!!

Weekend Awesomeness

It's quater to one on Sunday nite and Im about to get my earliest nite and longest sleep in three days. Since I woke up Friday morning 60 odd hours have passed and in that time I have had 10 hours sleep (plus a doze that doesn't really count and will be explained later). I spent the weekend visiting Megan in Loughborough. Many stories and adventures need far more time and focus than I am capable of right now so Im going to sleep. Ill fill you in when I wake up.
Nite Nite!!