Learning to Knit

For some reason I demanded Jo show me how to knit over the weekend. So I started knitting - very poorly. And it is so amusing to see the giant holes in the first 10 rows. At that point I took my knitting home with me to Mum and she showed me a new technique, so all the rows after that have much more tension and are much neater. It looks ridiculous, the loose, holey end and then these four perfect rows. But I plan to keep knitting it into a scarf and look back on it as my first ever attempt.

Waiting for Godot in the Loft

Last week I took one of the students I meet up with postering. This means walking through the humanities and social sciences faculty pinning up our poster on any random space we can find.

Our dream is to have people come along to our public meetings, called "God In the Loft" (named because it's at a cafe on campus called the Loft), because they see the poster. But in reality, we're really just wanting to make a bit of background noise around campus so people know the Christians do exist.

But I was chuffed to find out today that someone had gone around graffiti-ing the posters with texta, adding 'ot' to the end of God. In other words "Find Godot... in the Loft". The student who came postering with me was very perplexed, so I explained it was a reference to the absurdist Samuel Beckett play, Waiting for Godot. I discovered the play in my last year of school when I was a bit of an existential try-hard. There was something thrilling about knowing other existential try-hards were engaging with our God posters. yay!

Beach Picnic Saga

My friends Veronica (who reads this blog and thinks she can be invisible! muhahah) and Trish from primary school/church decided to have a picnic last weekend. This was a great idea. We each brought a segment of the meal - I was on dessert duty - and shared our feast.

It was however, Veronica's idea to have the picnic at the beach. So we drove to Warriewood, only to discover there is no grassy, shady parts of the beach at 1pm (surprise!)... so after much exploring, she decided we should trek across the breadth of the beach to the tiny sliver of shade closest to the headland otherwise known as the scary rocky part of the beach. No, i'm exaggerating, it was lovely. But it was quite amusing, the length we had to go to, to find a shady bit.

Anyway, so we had a fun time and there were some hangliders in the air..

Anyone for vomit-stew?

My housemate Jo cooked dinner last week and it came out looking like vomit, so I thought i'd document the occasion... it was meant to be beef satay. But because we bought home brand frozen vegies (which we've decided not to do again), they came in cubes and looked horrible!

Attack of the little people

I had a lovely dinner with an old friend from the church I used to go to in

Lindfield a few weeks ago. The last time I saw her children was about 2 years ago, and she's since had another one. And I took some photos with the youngest one in my arms. She's pretty darn cute...

The Balcony Incident

So the fire brigade was called to our neighbouring apartment block last week when a woman locked herself on her balcony.

She had a three-year-old son inside her unit who was asleep, and so banged on the glass door of the balcony for about an hour straight before one of our neighboures rang 000!

The police and firebrigade rocked up to rescue her at 1AM. It was quite dramatic, and being a voyeur, I took some photos. It felt very Rear Window.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

I'm getting baptised at church tonight, which is exciting. I'm excited because my family is coming, and I will be interviewed by our pastor about how I came to be a Christian. I put my trust in Jesus four years ago on the 04.04.04, which was a week before Easter back then. And today is Easter Sunday, and I'm getting baptised. It's all rather neat!

I wonder what my family will think - our church doesn't have pews, and is aesthetically different to most other churches, which is something they won't be expecting. Plus our songs are modern and the people are young. I think they will find it good different, not bad different. I'm praying the message of hope through the resurrection of Jesus will be refreshing both for them, and all of us.

Wilco at the Enmore

What is it about Wilco...?! Well actually I know what it is - they're just an amazing band... but both times i've seen them, I've seen famous people in the crowd.

This time last year we saw Toni Collette, and Paul Dempsey (lead singer Something for Kate).

Last night I saw Joel Edgerton and his girlfriend, who is the mean blonde girl in Looking for Alibrandi. But I also saw the ABC's National Security Correspondent Leigh Sales, who I interviewed in 3rd year uni for an assignment, but never met! And a journalist who fills in as presenter of AM on the ABC when Tony Eastley is away.

But perhaps more significantly, I ran into the guy I took to my year 10 formal! It was a bit odd. Fun to see him again, but it's just been so long since we actually hung out. I took him to my formal as a friend, and always suspected he was gay, and he now officially is. Both of us have changed heaps, physically and everything else, but it was nice he came up and said hi. I love that he's doing his honours at COFA on Sonic Youth's album art. hahah...

Sometimes it feels like life is such a cliche.

The Christmas before last I made my father a compilation of all his favourite music. I did it for a couple of reasons: Firstly, I wanted to know what his favourite music was, and to experience and savour it and secondly, I wanted him to be able to enjoy it all, easily and take pleasure in listening to it all in succession. So I painstakingly waited for him to write a list, then the searched iTunes store for these obscure pieces of music and bought them all and then turned it into two cds for him. He loved it!

Every now and then, when I'm in the mood I listen to some of his favourite music, and find it a totally unique experience. Not only is the music beautiful, but it is a window into my father's soul.

I just listened to Strauss' Four Last Songs, three beautiful classical compositions with amazing German lyrics. The four songs are "Spring", "September", "Going to sleep" and "Evening's Glow".

I particularly love "Evening's Glow":

Im Abendrot (Eichendorff)
Through trouble and joy we havewalked hand in hand;
we can rest from our wandering
snow, above the peaceful country-side.

The valleys fall away around us,
the sky is already darkening,
Only a pair of larks still risedreamily into the scented air.

Come here, and let them fly
For soon it will be time to sleep
and we must not lose our wayin this solitude.

O broad, contented peace!
So deep in the sunset glow,
How exhausted we are with ourwanderings—can this then be death?

Reading the dictionary

I like learning new words, like just then I learnt the word 'tacit'. It's one of many words in my vocabulary that I don't know how to execute! So I'm going to try it out some time.

Just in case you're dumb like me.... Tacit = adj. not openly expressed, but understood, implied or inferred. Eg. "tacit approval"

Have you ever noticed...

...how craggy Gordon Ramsay's face is? As my housemate said, it's like a bassett hound.

I have quite a fondness for the show Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. I'm not sure whether to be ashamed about that or not - but I don't really care. I love it. Other shows I love but rarely see are Grand Designs, What Not to Wear.

And it's all about material stuff - houses, clothes and expensive food - three things I can't afford much. I hate to think I'm being caught in the aspirational trap, but I don't think I am, because I still live in a rental property, shop for clothes at K-Mart, and buy all my furniture at IKEA.

But it's not so much that I can't afford them, but that I know that everything I have and am is in Christ, and to be careless with my money is to snub God. It is a huge challenge not to be sucked into a consumerist blackhole though, isn't it?

Learning

I am learning again.

I go through periods where I've felt my thought-life has suffered a drought, where I learn nothing more than the basics of survival and the perfection of an art (like the writing of a radio news story or the writing of an essay). But I feel that recently, I've given myself the space to think again.

I'm not sure if this is because my job is so flexible, my purpose so nebulous, my time so elastic. Or whether it's due to something else, which I can't explain. It doesn't really matter though, because a revival is always good.

It means I'm waking up at 3am and writing poetry, and making felt badges again and pondering ideas and questioning my identity. I haven't graduated to actually sharing much of this with the world yet, but it feels good to know I can still express myself in these ways.

It began a couple of weeks ago when I pulled out an anthology of poetry by Andrew Motion, my favourite poet. He is Britain's Poet Laureate (ie. appointed by the Queen to write things like eulogies). However his poetry reveals so much more than that title belies. He's so good at writing about the everyday with simplicity and beauty, and embedding little epiphanies into his descriptions.

I really like doing this stuff. This stuff of learning and being again.

Andrew Daddo and playdough

I somehow convinced my housemate Jo to ring up for the ABC 702 quiz, Norman ... hahah..... I'm pretty persuasive! There's no way I'd do it, mainly because you can't as an ex-ABC employee do such a thing- how embarrassing? It's like showing you've shamefully re-formed the sheen and shine on what you know to be in reality quite a normal, not shiny job (ie. radio).... but I do so love the quiz. I became quite fond of it on freezing cold nights in Orange when I'd get in my car and of course the local abc station was tuned in, and the quiz would start as I was driving home.

I was quite sad to hear James O'Laughlin leave, but Andrew Daddo, who's the new presenter is so lovely and quite funny. A good mix of humour and just genuine interest in people.

Anyway, so I convinced Jo to call up, and she got such a shocker question - which island group is Tenerrife a part of!?? No idea... apparently the Cayman. Anyway, she had a cute conversation with mr daddo, about the lessons she learnt when moving out of home - to never go back!

And I also made playdough tonight.. for scripture tomorrow. I've never made playdough before... interesting. I had no idea there was a whole cup of salt in it! No wonder it makes children feel ill if they eat it!