Babysitting

I've not long managed to get the kids to bed, they're not too difficult, at least not compared to the bloody horses I had to feed this afternoon, I swear I'm gonna shoot one of those bloody things, they're about the size of a truck and they know I'm scared of them which means they play up a treat every time I'm by myself!! This morning one of them was going skitz and I couldn't even get it's halter on to take it out to the field, I ended up opening the field gate and the stable door and then hiding while it found its own way back.

Thought my Grampa's nomination in the Bloggies Awards mite be worth a mention. As it happens, I am a third generation blogger, both my Dad and my Grampa both have blogs, the most prestigious of which, it turns out, is Grampas. Check out the awards here and drop him a vote or three (you can vote once for every email address you have ;) His blog is called Holties House and is nominated under "Best Australian or New Zealand Weblog"

The Wish List

I have been thinking about putting together a kind of wish list of things that I really want to do for a while now, some examples of things that make the list are: not to shave or cut my hair for and entire year, live in europe and queensland, drive a combie van across the nullabor with a bunch of friends, and all sorts of other crazy stuff. I will post it in the sidebar at some point. Anyhow, the reason I mention this is that I found something that goes straight to the top of the list this morning.

I want to do it SOOOO much!! Looks like the biggest rush ever!!
*High Thanks to Youthblog for the discovery.

First Snow

I woke this morning to find the farm at Lacey Green blanketed in snow. Not having seen snow before this was a cause for excitement and I ran outside for a quick snowball war with the side of the house and the car (no one else was around to play... I won tho!!) Turns out half the country saw snow last nite but Lacey Green got the best fall of the towns I saw today. Now the reason I was in Lacey Green rather than the Manor in Haddenham is that I'm filling in here and there as a nanny for the Bish'es boss while he's away snow boarding (for three months, the lucky bugger) and stayed over last nite in my "little" house, which shall have to be named shortly (and is actually about twice the size of Dan and Danni's house) after looking after the kids. As a bonus of this job, Andys "ship" Tulula's Revenge sails under my flag for the next few weeks.
Am hoping it will snow again tomorow and I can make an igloo, didn't have time for a proper play this morning and I will definitely go for a snow fight even if I have to sneak into one of the local schools to start it!!

New Look

I cut the dreads off yesterday after a year and a half of the rasta look. James did the honours, and I have to say its miraculously come out really good. Miraculous because literally all thats been done is James hacked them off and then Polly combed out the knots and wax and then I washed it!! By rights it should look rubbish, but somehow I'm pulling it off. There's some debate about whether I look older or younger or both at the same time. Heath is saying older, I am saying younger (coz I have a photo of me at 16 that looks almost the same) and Ian says I look like an Oxford uni student in my Oxford t-shirt, which I'm taking as a definite compliment. On the other hand, Lucy has managed to destroy me in two sentences better than anyone else on the face of the planet has in the last 19 years!! The two direct quotes over dinner last nite were "you know, it makes you look more feminine" followed up with "but in a really good way, you look pretty" Now, as a bloke, that's fairly crushing, and by fairly I mean totally and utterly.




































































































































Yeah... I did the vain thing of taking a million photos of myself trying to see if I liked it and get a good shot out of my annoyingly un-photogenic face =]

Wikipedia

I've recently begun to make use of a great resource called Wikidpedia, an incredible online encyclopedia. But when I went to log in today I couldn't get online and so pressed "reset my password" and went to check my email for the new one. I had no new emails and couldn't work out what was going on for a minute until I had a brainwave. Going back to Wikidpedia I tried a different username and got straight on. Meaning I just reset someone elses password!! Whoever the poor guy is will have a moment or two of confusion next time he goes to log in.
Busy week this one in the Posse House. And yet little of it is worth posting on the net. The most noteworthy event was watching Children of Men last nite. It has Clive Owen in it (always a good start) and Michael Caine (getting better all the time) and is set some 25 years in the future where the human race is facing extinction because there are no more children being born, the youngest person in the world being 18 years old. The film manages to be incredibly realistic in its style and characters while telling an incredible story that would seem impossible, man on the edge of extinction within a generation. One interesting aspect is that the larger details of the story are never more than vaguely explained, you have to gather a lot as you go along and guess at a lot more, filling in the gaps as you go. Maybe I was just in tune last nite but this seemed easy and made the movie if anything more enjoyable as I grappled with the plot to understand what was happening. I liked it anyway.

Have a Break...

...have a Kitkat

Dinner for One

This is a great sketch that apparently is a great German tradition to watch on Sylvester (new years eve). Now, I've seen a video of the German new years for the new millenium where they burned a giant wooden, ummm, artwork I guess you'd call it, and just sat there watching it burn... I totally didn't get it. Apparently it didn't symbolise anything, just for the sake of it. My dad and sister both got it and said "you either get it or you don't" which didn't really help me "get it". So, having one example of German tradition that seems just totally bizarre, this rates well down the other end as a quality waste of time. If you have ten minutes enjoy the sketch!!

2 days down, 3 to go

Two days are done for the week and I feel like it should be the weekend again!! Maybe it's just the return to work after the (unexpectedly extended) Christmas break, or maybe... probably... definitely... the last two days have been particularly full on and emotionally draining. A combination of good friends going back to uni, no sleep Saturday nite, missing church (which happened to be most of the uni friends last service for the break) due to no sleep on Saturday nite and then making the mistake of sitting down at about 8am for a moment to be woken 2 hours later by James using his bloody bubble machine that he got for Christmas to blow bubbles in my face so that he could tell me that Ian was there to take me to church... I must have decided at that point that I wasn't going to church, I dont really remember much beyond the bubbles to be honest, and spent the rest of the day feeling crap about the choice and sleeping in and not getting to say goodbye to people. Monday I spent most of the day trying to work out a job description for the next six months with Mim and that seemed to bring up more and more and more issues and things that needed to be worked through than anything else and spent a lot of time working through that emerging from the whole process without a job description and a lot of questions. Last nite was cell group, which lived up to its regular quality, but ended in another drain as we said goodbye to Megs as she heads back to uni. Today I attempted to answer some of the questions from yesterday and am now coming up with two proposals for job descriptions, one to be worked through tomorow morning, the other on Thursday morning. Hopefully by that stage I will be able to crawl up in a little ball and there will be no more questions and emotional drain to prevent me from peaceful, blissful, sleep. Unfortunately Friday is not accounted for in all of this and I have no idea what it may hold.
Home sickness appears to be rearing its head once more to take advantage of my drained state and it's difficult not to feel a bit depressed when you're drained and when it gets dark before you leave work giving the impression of a constant, oppressive, wet, nite time. Tis ok, just need to hold on, if I make it to the weekend it will all be good, just gotta get through this week.

New Years Resolutions

Some resolutions for the year:
I will finish my assignments
I will read the books I borrow from the church library
I will run one day trip in where I do not need to majorly restructure the timetable on the run, do not lose or damage any of the borrowed resources, we finish on time and we do not upset anyone from the local parish (particularly the vicar)
I will write a proper budget
I will stick to said budget
Said budget will include a savings plan
I will call home once a week
I will stop getting home after everyone else has gone to bed
I will start playing sport again
I will make use of my diary for more than just recording the things I should have done
I will maintain good relationship with the vicar

These were the resolutions I liked from YouthBlog:
I will put aside time to pray for the young people
I will stop eating all the tuck while setting up for youth cafe
I will build in some professional development this year
Time with God will become a priority and a neccessity
I will invest in relationships with parents and members of the congregation
I will make a point of meeting up with a less experienced youth minister
I will make a point of meeting up with a more experienced youth minister
I will not skateboard in Church when anybody else is around

I had best point out at this point that most of these are made in jest, so that when I fail dismally I do not become depressed. It's also 6:30am, and it's a widely known fact that the only way I see a clock at that time of day is if I had no sleep the nite before, so Im not sure if any of the above resolutions even make sense and, truthfully, there's not much point in checking. I'll have a look in a day or three when my brain decides to function again. Until then...

Welcome to the New Year

Im sitting in the office at one minute to ten, almost half awake, and liking that I am the first to arrive for the first day back at work. (Me being the first to arrive for anything doesn't happen v often so it's something to savour when it does) Conversely there is the possibility that everyone else has decided not to start work again today and no one has bothered to tell me, which would be slightly less good than the present situation.
New Years Eve was awesome, definitely beat last years nite out in London. It was followed up yesterday with breakfast at 12 (huge feast of bacon, eggs, sausages, beans, toast and tea) and a movie, 8 Days a Week, which was reasonably entertaining but ended with the whole point being that our purpose on earth is to exist between the moments of joy when we have sex. Not the deepest message ever.
I now have a week (or part of the week anyway) to recover sufficiently to attempt to equal Danbos (Atari Man) feat of four days without sleep next weekend. Starting Friday I will try to go without sleep until Monday nite (will probably settle for mid-afternoon Monday to be honest) Ian was listing the reasons the idea is idiocy last nite but most of them merely encouraged me!!
The era of the dreads is drawing to a close. I finally set a date to cut them off. Saturday 13th January. This decision was confirmed in its wisdom on New Years Eve when Andy half yanked a dread out of my skull during a wrestling match (I say wrestle, it was more a case of Andy plonking his considerable weight on top of my sleeping form and proceeding to beat the stuffing out of it, my nipples are still sore!!)
Thats all for the first post of the New Year thinks I. Some resolutions may follow in the next couple of days drawing on YouthBlog for inspiration. Until then...