what's doing in James' world

Work has kicked in again.

Yesterday was quite an interesting day. There wasn’t too many emails to get through, but there was a lot to get my head around. Last week, it seems there was quite a bit of talk about sales targets for 08/09, our sales commission incentive plan, and just general job role talk for this fin year. So it was a bit overwhelming at times.

Suffice to say, my job role for this year is almost that job I’ve always wanted - just focused on mobile and wireless data, and moving away from call rates and handsets and basic stuff like that. Unfortuantely, the job I’ve always wanted involved me being a support for things like that, and not having a sales focus. But alas, I will have targets and will need to sell :) Still, it’s pretty tops.

I was all excited about getting home last night and cooking an awesome pasta bake. I felt like pasta bake on Sunday, and Debbie suggested I cook it on Monday night for dinner. So off I went to Woolies to fill my basket with all sorts of things that would make my pasta bake awesome: chicken, prawns, broccolini, mushrooms. And I put it all in a baking dish and into the oven in went. Unfortunately, cos I had so much stuff in it, there wasn’t quite enough liquid to make sure that everything was covered - so some of the pasta was exposed. So consequently, 20 mins into the cooking, the top layer of pasta was badly burnt and I had to throw it out. But once I removed all that, it worked better, and it still turned out pretty nicely. But lesson learnt - when making a pasta bake, make sure the sauce/water covers the stuff completely.

It was definitely a different camp for me this year. A very different experience. Much more an experience of assisting others, or even just sitting back doing nothing while activities were on. There was only a small amount that I actually ran myself. And that’s actually a good thing. It’s a good thing that I was mature enough to relinquish control for most of the time.

I’m still very tired though. Slept when I got home, then Debbie cooked me some dinner, which was awesome. And then had a normal night’s sleep. But I came round here to Deb’s place this morn, and proceeded to have another hour long nap.

Lunch time now, then it will be off to Luke & Elise’s engagement party, which should be fun. And then back to Toon town for a celebratory dinner; to celebrate 3 years of some awesome growth in the church. And I’m not actually doing anything - will just be sitting back, enjoying friends, enjoying the food, enjoying Miss Eliza Magill singing, and then it will be home to sleep.

I should be running a camp and stuff… but this deserves a blog post:

Big Brother axed for 2009.

Nice work. Pity it took them 6 seasons or whatever to work out it’s crap though.

It has been quite the busy week. I’m not a fan of having the end of the financial year on a Monday. By Tuesday arvo I was definitely feeling like I needed the weekend quite desperately.

Wednesday and Thursday were some all-day training things. Found it hard to keep from being tired just sitting and listening. But it was good stuff. And then today has been pretty relaxed too - I packed up my desk here in the city this morning before heading out to Parra to get it all set up so that it’s all ready for Monday morning. We were supposed to have a meeting this arvo about 08/09 sales targets, and so I trotted back into the city… but in the end, it was postponed. That was a bit frustrating, but not so bad. I had some chinese food for lunch, and then just went through some work emails briefly. What’s really strange (for me anyway) is that I haven’t had my work computer on and been logged in since Monday afternoon. It’s quite strange and unusal for me.

Now I’m just sitting here killing time waiting for my boss’s new computer to finish building and get it set up for her. Yes, I’m a mobile sales specialist. :)

One week til Kedron begins. Crazy. There’s still a bit to do… but not much I don’t think. I’m feeling quite anxious… but that’s normal for me. I’m pretty certain everything is done… I just want to get there and get into it.

I’m gonna head home soon and start working on the final hour-by-hour timetable that I like to have. And that is good to have. Then it will be dinner at parentals’ time with Debbie and my sister and Ryan too.

Quite a calmer Saturday than the last :) Just had some good luncheon with b, and then headed out to say goodbye to the lovely Nina, who is off to the Congo, and then onto America for possibly quite a few years. Sad to see her go.

Last night we headed out to dinner with Toonie people and to the movies too. Possibly not the best decision - we were both quite tired. But dinner was nice, and then we went to watch Get Smart. I did laugh, a lot, at the start… but as the movie got toward the end, I got quite bored. Pity. Steve Carrell is quite a funny guy, but he just plays the same character over and over. That will get boring quickly if he’s not careful.

Still no firm date on when I’ll be heading out to work from Parra. Tuesday is when things all kick off out there, but there’s apparently desk allocation issues at the present - good ol’ Telstra: think of a great idea, but not quite think through the logistics. I think Shay [my sidekick who's coming with me to work from Parra] and I will just do a lot of back and forth in the meantime. I’ve only got two weeks and then I’m on leave for a week anyway.

Wow, that was an intense weekend! So intense that I’m home from work today cos I’m utterly exhausted (but have a sore throat too). It will probably only be topped by a weekend about 6 months away :)

Saturday was just amazing, as you’ve already read. But then Sunday was more stressful in some ways! It was wonderful to be able to see both our families and have them be so excited for us. But lots of thinking, and telling the story a lot meant that by Sunday evening, I was very drained :)

I headed to Debbie’s place, and Jen & Howie came for a visit. Howie made sure we knew he thought it was yuck :) We chatted about wedding dates briefly, and Debbie’s mum kinda wanted to then go into reception plans too… but there was no way we were ready to start talking about that yet. We watched a movie before heading back to Toonie to hang out with the Three Tops Toonie Chicks for coffee at GJs. It was a great time seeing them and celebrating with them too. Then it was off to visit my parents and enjoy the excitement one more time. We chatted about dates too, and it was good to be able to leave there with the 27th December pretty much locked in.

Then it was time to head back to Thornleigh for church… and psyching ourselves up for being excited still, even though our energy levels were starting to drop. :) Debbie’s pastor was very lovely and, as slightly embarrassing as it was, got us up on the stage and prayed for us during the service. And then we got to share with all her/our friends after the service was over… many fun reactions, and it really was a very good evening.

Finally, a patient Sammy dragged us away and we headed off to Pennant Hills to have some very yummy pizza, and have some really good quality time hanging out with a guy who’s pretty special to both Debbie and I. It’s been awesome to get to know Sam - he and Debbie have been friends for ages, and so for he and I to get on so well and become such great mates so quickly has been really awesome.

And then the day was done. It was time to head home and sleep. Sleep a deep, deep sleep.

I’m looking forward to the weekend only being just around the corner! Tomorrow will be Debbie’s birthday adventure which will be a lot of fun… even though it will be cold.

We had the last Kedron meeting last night, which went really well. So very happy about that. We talked through the teen camp program and I volunteered some people to lead activities that they’d suggested (that’s going to be my new Kedron rule: you suggest an activity, you’ve just volunteered to run it), and then we went through the rest of the program and people were really quick to put up their hands to lead things. It was very encouraging from my point of view. So those frustrations are relieved slightly; but there’s still quite a bit I need to do. Saturday evening/Sunday will be going hard on the emails I think - there’s a lot I have to send out.

Today will be a bit of an intense day at work I think. Late yesterday arvo, we came across a massive sale opportunity. Sales this size usually take about 6 weeks - customer presents opportunity, we respond with pricing, they think about it, and then sign. That’s usually a 6-week timeline. But this customer wants to decide on a carrier by Tuesday. That’s very crazy. So that will be pretty much all I focus on today here in the office - just getting that proposal done and looking awesome, and just hoping that our off-the-shelf pricing will be ok… cos we don’t have time to go and get approval for customised pricing. Will see how it goes.

And then sometime today I’m very much looking forward to heading across the road to the Apple Store and wandering around in there for a little while. Debbie messaged me this morning and told me not to spend too much money - so does that mean I’m allowed to buy something?! :)

There also may be a visit to a new Max Brenner store here in the city. I don’t know where it is… but Lyndal does. And so we will have to have a mobiles meeting there I think.

I’ve had this crap work PC for about 15 mths now. And for that whole 15 months, I’ve kept it free of every piece of spyware and malware, and nothing has ever really gone that wrong with it. That’s a feat in itself, and something I’m proud of.

But somehow, in the last 24 hours or so, some piece of software has snuck its way into my PC, and it is playing havoc with the stupid things! Whatever software it is, has successfully hijacked and screwed with my proxy settings, brought up pop-up windows *every* time I visit a webpage (although it usually doesn’t work because of the above), and just now, it has crashed the main “explorer” app that runs Windows (so my desktop and start menu have now disappeared!).

I managed to download Spybot, and so it’s going through and scanning and hopefully fixing. And then maybe I’ll have a usable computer again.

*sigh* it would be lovely if Telstra used Macs.

What a fantastic Sunday evening that was. I got to play some music with a bunch of very talented musos, and that made for quite a relaxed and enjoyable practice. And because of that, I was keen to try different things, and suggest doing songs quite differently. And they didn’t miss a beat. But it all made for me very much enjoying myself and smiling lots (and even dancing a little bit *shock horror*). And I hope that in people seeing me enjoying the songs so much as I lead, that they might be able to see the joy that we should live in, in Christ.

Hung out for a while at Aleesha’s place and had some very yummy pumpkin soup. But came home to just go through some emails from Kedron and to start thinking about a few things. The 4 of us in the director team are having a little meeting tomorrow night to go through things before the last meeting before camp on Thursday with all the other leaders. Starting to feel the pressure a bit now… but things are always awesome - I can’t wait for the actual week of camp.

Looking forward to working from home tomorrow though. That will be mighty wonderful! 

Saturday afternoon naps are the greatest. A solid 90 minutes of napping… so awesome.

Looking forward to tonight… B, Aleesha, Kate and Leanne and I are all heading out to Platinum restaurant in Macquarie. We used to go there quite a bit a few years ago - it was our bible study group hang out. Sort of :) But we had fun times there, so we thought it would be fun to go again.

We were going to go Putt Putt too, but the snow that’s surely on its way might stop that happening tonight.

Still, fun times with Toonie people are much looked forward to.

There’s a lovely smell of roast lamb and roast pork wafting through the House of Bach at the moment. We’re all hanging out watching State of Origin tonight rather than having bible study. And rather than the usual pizza we have, Steve has cooked an amazing roast. Or two. Lamb and pork! So good.

Had a pretty tops day at work today. Finally feeling like I’m getting traction with the account team and the sales are starting to come through! In our meeting this morning, we went through our month-to-date sales, and I’m sitting at $66k (out of $220k target). But that was still surprising when I know I still have a lot of huge sales to close this month that are as good as signed. So I’m quite excited about that!

And yesterday was just a pretty normal day… but the evening was lots of fun. It was Debbie’s birthday yesterday! And so it was family dinner round at her place with Jen & Howie as well. I was very excited about finally getting to taste some of Mumma Gower’s chinese cooking that had been talked up for quite a while… but it didn’t disappoint. And then it was fun times playing the Australian Game of the Year! There was lots of rules, but it was definitely lots of fun. Debbie and I are going to give it another run on Friday night with my parents and sister.

Right now, I think the roast is calling…

This one was quite a beauty.

After a nice sleep in, Debbie and I headed into Hornsby Westfields. We lined up for a long time to get some movie tickets, and then headed to the well loved Hornsby food court for some lunch. I enjoyed a pretty tops burger, and some even better chips. Seeing as the 2pm session was full, we had to wait til the 3:30 session … and so we wandered around various shops and ran into fun people and did some talking.

But finally, we headed to the movies to watch Narnia #2, Prince Caspian. It had a lot to live up to; the first one was pretty awesome. But I reckon it delivered. It was quite a bit darker, which had already been mentioned by quite a few reviewers. And I generally don’t enjoy “fantasy” type movies… but Prince Caspian was just awesome.

I was quite humbled by a part in the movie [don't worry, not a spoiler] where Lucy finally meets up with Azlan, and says something like, “I always knew you were here!” It was just so incredibly symbolistic of how I want to be as I look to God. It was a very special moment in the movie.

Tonight is going to be pretty awesome too though…

At 9pm Sydney time, The Offspring are putting up their whole album on the internet to listen to. Don’t know for how long, so I will be staying up to listen to that. Very exciting :) Hope I’m not disappointed though..

And then at 11pm Sydney time is the opening of Apple’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference, where Steve Jobs will deliver his keynote presentation, and hopefully reveal a wondrous 3G iPhone! But I don’t think I will stay up for that - I think I’ll just get up earlier and read about it before work tomorrow.

edit: Hmm, my maths clearly sucks. Offspring is at 1am tonight, and WWDC is at 3am. That sucks a lot.

Can’t believe I haven’t blogged all week. Quite possibly the longest time between posts ever.

It has been an interesting week at work… changes are afoot again. But that’s just the new fin year for you. Some big companies just love change for the sake of it. But it shouldn’t be too bad - I guess I just shouldn’t get too comfortable this month! It’s been good so far - getting to know the account guys and encourage them to find me lots of mobile sales opportunities.

My fuel card arrived on Tuesday! That was exciting too.

But this weekend is family weekend galore. Off to Debbie’s place for a lovely family lunch for her birthday. And then tomorrow is a family lunch at my parents’ place. And then there’s still one more day of the weekend to go after that… how awesome!

… and it’s only just begun.

Yay! :)

Monday is being quite kind to me this week. Left at about 7:30 this morning, which is usually disaster time for driving to the city, and add to the fact that it was pouring… but the traffic was quite awesome. And our little mobiles club up here on Level 9 all headed out for a coffee and meeting this morning, which was also good (kinda just an excuse to have Telstra pay for our Monday morning coffee)… and now I’m about to head off to the other end of the mid-city and grab lunch with some old Telstra friends.

Quite a contrast to my crazy head yesterday afternoon. My head kinda exploded when I realised there’s only 2 and a half weeks til the next, and final, Kedron meeting, and that I needed to have my program done, and leaders assigned to activities. That’s the same program that I haven’t started yet. But a couple of phone calls, some emails, and some base planning meant I could actually sleep last night.

Will do some more work this evening, while my amazingly wonderful girlfriend cooks some dinner for me, and I think I’ll be well on the way to getting it all done this week.

Hooray for pub lunch though! And hooray for cooking! :)

Big time hoorays must go out to Friday. What a tops day of the week it is.

Today was quite a relaxing day. Started with a presentation to customers about PDAs. Our marketing guys had organised it and had been constantly calling us to keep reminding our customers about coming and RSVP’ing - it got a bit frustrating during the week having marketing call us all the time. But I realised why - only about 5 or 6 customers showed up at an event that was supposed to cater for about 50 of them. Poor marketing people! Still, a free breakfast and a brief chat with one of my customers was nice this morning - even if it meant I had to be in the city before 8am for the second morning in a row.

But then the rest of the morning was pretty lazy. And then at lunchtime, it was off to Alexandria Bowling Club for some quality BBQ lunch and a fun game or two of lawn bowls! Very nice way to end the week indeed. My teammate and I won the first game we played, and so we switched up to the other end of the lawn and played against another pair who won their game convincingly… and it was close and very fun, but we lost in the end. Still, great way to end a week, and it was good to hang out with new work people and get to know them a little bit better. Apparently, they have already nicknamed me “Fry”, in reference to Futurama. I don’t know why [apparently I will find out on Monday], but once you have a nickname in this team, you’re in. Apparently. :)

Hanging out with Debbie tonight… we just had some leftovers for dinner. Or rather, I did :) Very yummy indeed. Tiredness seems to have gotten the better of both of us this week… we’re both just sitting on the couch quite lifeless.

But looking forward to tomorrow - Playjerise are playing at The Factory Theatre in Enmore! So very excited. Also looking forward to seeing Gethsemane too. Haven’t even heard of them before, but apparently they are quite brilliant - infectious blend of rock, soul, blues and funk.

Stinkin’ hail!

I got caught in a massive storm driving home this evening. It was quite cool to be able to admire the lightning… but then it started to hail. Lots. Thankfully, all the hail stones were quite tiny, but there was lots and lots of them.

It’s still raining outside… so I can’t tell if there’s any damage, but I really hope there isn’t.

Spent all day today working on a presentation on PDAs and mobile data to run an education session tomorrow morning for the account executives. It was a bit annoying that marketing only told us we were presenting this on Tuesday, and by the time we got sorted out who was doing what, we really only got things together late this afternoon!

But it looks good at least. Gotta be in there early tomorrow morning though.

Looking forward to a toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwich for dinner.

I do love the way God seemingly has conversations with you in multiple parts.

Saturday night, Debbie and I were having a [rather late night] chat about prayer, stages of life, and God saying yes and no in different ways. Last night, b preached a pretty tops sermon indeed. And the cool bit was that what he was saying followed on almost directly from what I had been saying only 18 hours earlier. Very awesome indeed.

And it all followed on beautifully from what Deano had preached on a week ago - on how we should pray in a submissive way, rather than just expect things and ask for things. It’s just really caused me to rethink how I pray, and my view of God in how he listens to us and responds. It’s all been very encouraging.

Last night was a pretty ripper night for music too. I had an absolute ball playing keys with the boys. We played Mighty To Save only for the second time in the service… but by the time we got to it in practice, we were playing very much together, and so it was quite easy to just chat about structure and order, and then just nail it pretty much from the first time through. It was oh-so loud… but that translates to oh-so fun sometimes ;)

And the preacher enjoyed it, so that’s a plus too!

Pretty quiet at work today. Need to start finding more sales opportunities to work on so I don’t get bored. Looking forward to dinner with parentals and Debbie tonight.

Can’t believe I haven’t blogged since Wednesday. The end of this week has just flown by.

Both Thursday and Friday were pretty good days at work. I spent quite a bit of time creating a couple of proposal templates for us to use at work - well actually, there were a couple floating around, but they needed tidying up and updating, so I made them pretty and easy to edit for each customer. It was actually quite fun.

Thursday night was Kedron meeting #2. Great evening… and feeling quite a lot more relaxed now that there’s a bunch of program ideas in the air and written down. But now the pressure’s on me to put them into a program. And I’m feeling like I want to do something quite different with the structure this year… which is hard cos I have to work in with the Senior High program as well. But we’ll see what happens :)

And then last night was off to Wenty to watch Les Miserable being performed by the Holroyd Musical & Dramatic Society. Mum got a part in it, so it was awesome to go and see her perform… but I definitely enjoyed the musical for what it was. Never seen Les Mis before, but it was brilliant. And incredibly well done - a very high standard for an amateur production!

Today was glorious - did nothing really. Well, had nothing planned. Debbie and I were having dinner last night and suddenly realised that there was absolutely nothing planned for today. After getting my haircut, I headed round to her place to hopefully see Jen & Howie, hear awesome stories, and maybe even get presents… but Howie wasn’t feeling too wonderful, so it had to be postponed. So we went on an adventure out to Fagan Park, where I’d never been before - that was a bit of fun - and then seeing as we were already sort of north-ish, we kept going and went to Pie in the Sky for lunch. I was very excited on the way :)

And then it’s just been hanging out back here at the House of Bach, watching AFL, playing keyboard and making fun music in GarageBand, and now just having had dinner and watched The Italian Job. Nice day.

There’s a joke about manblading that’s floating around in my head that made me laugh the other day. But I shan’t tell it here :)

Well, if there’s no wireless in the house, I’ll just make-do: using my data card from work :)

Feeling very, very tired this evening. Felt pretty tired and quite a bit bleh most of today. I headed home from work about 3 this arvo, and after doing a couple of things around the house, I had a pretty solid hour-long nap - which is actually pretty strange for me. Not the nap bit, but the length. And my glands are a bit swollen too. I’m desperately hoping it’s just a virus or something and that it’ll go away soon. It would suck muchly if it’s gladular fever back for round two (round one was in late 2004).

Anyway, I have been hanging in my room tonight rather than bible studying, and I’m just about to climb into bed and sleep. Nice and early.

I have been enjoying using Blackberry’s latest OS 4.5. This is definitely RIM’s worst kept secret - they’re usually very good at keeping software and information from being leaked, right up there with Apple. But this update is floating around the internet everywhere and is still yet to have a formal release date announced. So even though it’s a little bit buggy, it’s just brilliant and I love it. Much, much nicer email reading and composing, and it actually sends in HTML format, even though I seemingly can’t view it on my device. There’s quite a few more themes in the update too - Verizon Wireless’s theme is the nicest for me at the moment.

Anyway, now that the nerdiness is out of my system, I’m heading to sleep.

Me thinks I should blog something. But it will be brief. There is no wireless in the house at the moment until I have a chance to go out and get a new basestation, and when all you use is wireless, suddenly being tied to a stinkin’ blue cable is frustrating! I can’t be bothered staying out in the lounge room, and the LAN cable in my room isn’t long enough to reach my bed. So that’s why it will be brief and possibly boring too.

Today was good - first real day of being a part of the new sales team and getting some traction with the new job. I whipped up a quick proposal this arvo, which was a bit of fun (it’s so much easier to do a proposal for 9 mobiles rather than 79). And got rid of a fairly huge issue from the old job that was still hanging around.

And tonight has been hanging with Debbie - dinner at parentals, and now just hanging back here at the house of bach. I was quite grumpy this arvo cos my fuel card still hasn’t arrived - calls will be made tomorrow.

Can’t decide if I’m looking forward to the Kedron meeting on Thursday. Once that’s done it will mean I really need to step up the work I do on the program. And it’ll also be a lot of work just running the meeting too. But in the end, I’m working towards a week that is always amongst the best of my year… so I guess I should just keep thinking about that and just push through all the work that needs to be done to make it happen. And push through in a positive way I mean :)

There’s so many words that I’ve been enjoying lately…

[sure shot - the o.c. supertones]

I wanna see a life change. 
I wanna see a new man. 
I wanna fight the good fight. 
I wanna take the right stand. 
I wanna be like Jesus. 
I wanna pour my heart out. 
I wanna pick my cross up. 
I wanna hear the mob shout.

[mystery - brooke fraser]

I wanna get your words stuck in my head.
I wanna touch your soul with mine.
I wanna know that you hung the stars in the sky,
So on lonely nights I would know your presence.

Your love endures forever.
Your love changes me.
Your love makes me whole, makes me better;
Your love endures.

[sea of faces - kutless]

Sometimes my life, it feels so trivial;
Immersed in the greatness of space.
Yet somehow You still find the time for me;
It’s then You show me Your love.

And In Your eyes I can see, and in Your arms I will be.
I am not just a man, vastly lost in this world,
Lost in a Sea of Faces.

Because you traded Your life for mine.

Just one in a million faces.

[so great a salvation - the o.c. supertones]

“Hold me in your arms of love.
Sometimes I swear I feel your heartbeat.
I could never ever thank You enough…
But here’s my life for whatever it’s worth.”

The Supertones are quite awesome. I have been very much enjoying their tunes lately.

Tonight we sang I Surrender to finish the service at church. What an amazing song that is. I’m still flawed by its words everytime I sing it…

“Words alone cannot express all the hope that you’ve placed within me.
Healing and releasing all the hurts and fears by the hope that you have placed within me.

In between each heartbeat, Lord, I surrender.”

They’re just such brilliant words to pray.

That’s all I got. Time for me to sleep with such wonderful words in my head.

What a tops day that was. Didn’t feel like work at all…

• Not happy that Micky might already have to go back in for a service :( about 9 hours ago.
• off to get a coffee… and perhaps a bagel too. about 9 hours ago.
• Going to visit Mini people this afternoon. Trying to be calm. about 8 hours.
• packing up my computer to head out to Silverwater for friendly catch up with old customer. about 8 hours ago.
• Just said goodbye to a nice customer over coffee and good quality cakes. They were always worth 200 new mobile numbers a month. Will miss em. about 5 hours ago.
• Now at Canterbury on quite possibly my last customer visit in this job. Teaching someone how to sync email on a Palm Treo 750. about 5 hours ago.
• Done and dusted with the pda set up. It’s easy when it’s the 46th time you’ve done it. Off to Mini in Parra. about 5 hours ago.
• Just realised that’s work finished for today! Yay! about 4 hours ago.
• Hooray that Micky is fine! The nice BMW man just told me to use PULP rather than normal. Shoulda thought of that. about 4 hours ago.
• Frustrated that I can’t find my $100 mini shop gift voucher. Going to have some lunch. about 2 hours ago.
• Still can’t find gift voucher :( off to Myer to buy new work shirts! about 2 hours ago.
• In westpoint posting a letter and heading for Myer. It’s fun to finish work at lunchtime! about 1 hour ago.
• Yesss… 30% off :) 43 minutes ago.
• Mmm Coffee Emporium latte in hand. And with that, I’m headed home. 28 minutes ago.

Thanks twitter.

edit: hooray for fun new twitter updates on the right, and the cool little loading circle :D

What a wonderful week!

Not only has my replacement started, thus sharing my workload quite considerably, but it’s just been a very, very quiet week anyway! Annnnd, there’s been big sales coming through still! I really couldn’t ask for much more. :)

On Monday, we’re telling all the customers to start talking to my replacement for everything… but I don’t start my new job until the 19th! Hello quiet and relaxed week for James. It will be quite nice enjoying a bit of a break.

Tonight I’m hanging out with Debbie being Uncle James looking after the turtles after having a very yummy chinese prawn stir fry thingy that Deb’s mum cooked. Was delish.

That’s about all there is to my story. Micky is fun :)

What a fun weekend that was. Lots of driving and doing things.

Saturday night was bassing with the women of Toonie Bapts. Steve, Dave and I made guest appearences at their Women’s ministry night helping out in various ways. They’re always very awesome nights, and many of the guys who’ve been along to help wish they could go all the time. And as a bonus, Ellie played some songs in the background as people were arriving for about 20 mins, which was quite cool to just sit and listen to. The boys’ plan of ducking out to Gloria Jeans to get a coffee during the evening was thwarted when GJs was shut. Disappointing.

Sunday was a pretty tops day of relaxing after not feeling so wonderful at the start of the day. A quiet drive up the Putty Rd was in order though, and photos were taken. It’s such a lovely piece of road. I do want to keep going all the way up to Singleton one time soon, and then across to Newcastle, and then back down along the Old Pacific Hwy. Other roads still to drive include the Royal National Park and Sea Cliff Bridge, and also the Old Northern Rd up to Wisemen’s Ferry. Going up into Watagans would be fun too. Ahh so many nice roads in NSW.

I led at church on Sunday evening, and am a bit disappointed in the effort/prep I put in, but thankfully God still used us in the service, which is always exciting to see. And it just made me more aware of the effort I should be putting in. It was acoustic stylings on Sunday evening though - we were drummer-less. But surprisingly, that didn’t bother me much. And an acoustic sesh was actually quite fun. I enjoyed playing with those guys, and the songs really worked. Guess God had it planned all along.

And lastly… fun times last night hanging out with Sam and his lovely Canadian girlfriend, Jenn. It was frustrating getting home from work - clearly I didn’t learn from last week that leaving right on 5pm is a bad, bad thing. And then I was even stupider and thought I’d give Epping Rd a go! But finally at 6:30 I arrived in Thornleigh and cooked some dinner, and we all had a fun time. And even went for an excursion around the block in Micky.

I’m enjoying work being a little bit quiet. Hopefully my new friend will have her computer up and running tomorrow and I’ll be able to start getting her to liase with some of the customers, and can do even less! It’ll be like a mini holiday before I start my new role. Right now, I need to go fetch some coffee and some cookies for a friend who is having an uber crap day.

So what’s the Mini really like?

Incredible. It’s an absolute ball to drive. Very, very fun. I need to get used to driving a front-wheel drive car again though. Since I’ve had the Commodore, I’ve always said I prefer front-wheel drive cars… but now I just have to get used to driving one again now!

Just about the only thing I can find wrong with the car (and it’s not really wrong anyway), is that it’s almost got too much power for its little front wheels. It’s very hard to get the power down cleanly, especially when you’re exiting a corner. It handles brilliantly when you’re not accelerating hard, but give it a little push, and the poor thing struggles to keep traction.

But you could say that kinda adds to the fun. Cos the power of the car is unbelievable for a 1.6L. They quote 125kw of power… but cos the car’s so light, it feels like a lot more. And the torque is pretty awesome too - driving along in 5th gear at about 60km/h, and you can put your foot down and it just pulls very, very quickly.

The interior keeps the fun levels high as well: little fun things like “mood lighting” - there’s a couple of LEDs on the roof, and then some lights in behind the door handle, and on the b-pillar as well. And you can change what colour they are!! So cool.

And lastly, and very importantly, the sound system is crazy. It sounds very much like something you’d pay many thousands of dollars for. Actually, perhaps I did. Anyway, it’s just brilliant and very much leaves my Commodore’s stereo sounding like a $20 cassette player from Dick Smith :)

Just wanted to share all that. As you can tell I am still very excited about it. Just about 24 hours old, and I’ve already driven more than 200kms in it. And I’m sitting here on Debbie’s couch feeling quite ancy about not driving it now.

Please allow me to introduce Micky:

Micky is a 2007 Mini Cooper S. He likes PULP, twisty roads, and long drives by the beach. This photo was taken this afternoon as he sat beside some pretty BMWs in the dealership - but he looked better :)

After what has felt like a very, very long week, I got to collect him this afternoon, and have enjoyed driving it around Sydney this arvo.

Debbie and I are headed out this evening for adventures - amongst other things, we will be going on a night drive through Galston Gorge! I will have to find time to get back out there in the day, or up to the Putty Road to do a nice photo shoot.

Today was a pretty tops day. A new person started who is taking over my job. We have more than two weeks to handover everything, and she’s already been doing this job for about 2 years - just in a different state. So all I need to do is introduce the customers to her, and she’s all set. And that should really be done by Monday or Tuesday. Quite relaxing :)

It was just fun getting to know her and hearing how different the job we do is in WA - good excuse for us and a couple of others in the team to just go and have coffee for a couple of hours :)

I’ve just finished cleaning out the Commodore - tomorrow it goes to a new home. And I collect something new tomorrow afternoon…

And now, I’m feeling like playing some acoustic and practicing some of the songs for Sunday. After that, it’ll be time to head down to the church for practice for the W4W event on Saturday evening. I’m bassing there, and that will be lots of fun - not so fun is the bit where I discovered my bass needs another service after only being 6 months old. No fretless bassing on the weekend. :(

But then afterwards, it will be off to Hornsby for late-night-latte adventures! A couple of Kedron friends and I did this a couple of months ago, and we thought it would be fun to do again. No dramas that I won’t be home til at least midnight - it’ll still be fun!

Then, bring on Friday. The bestest day of the week. And it very well may go down as being the best Friday of the year…

Public holidays are fantastic. And so today, Debbie and I headed out west to the Blue Mountains. Didn’t really have anything specific planned - but we had packed lunch, and just had to find somewhere to eat it. What we did along the way was just gonna be random. I think I’ll tell this story with the help of my tweets.

hooray for almost good weather for Debbie & James’ blue mountains adventure.

Woke up to cloudiness, but it wasn’t raining and the skies didn’t look as threatening. But after packing the last of the lunch stuff and heading down to the car, it started to rain slightly. Only a little though.

that’s the fun thing about living out west - only 20 mins from the bottom of the blue mountains! stopped in Blaxland for coffee for James.

You didn’t think I could get by without having a coffee just cos it’s a public holiday did you? I was amazed I found somewhere open. This place was just a bakery, but they did coffee too. And it was surprisingly not bad!

traffic jam in Woodford. not fun. starting to sprinkle a bit. music change time. just listened to Playjerise.

Traffic jam #1 happened in Woodford. Was caused by a combo of roadworks and just merging and traffic lights all at once. Playjerise had gotten us all the way up into the mountains.

clearly everyone else in sydney thought it would be fun to come up to the blue mountains today! listening to Jesus Freak. best album.

The worse traffic jam happened up a little further in Lawson. No one moved a single millimetre for about 10 minutes. Never found out why. But at this time, a quick glance of the street directory, and I was off down Badgery Cres, which eventually becomes Railway Pde, and after much winding and fun, ends up in Wentworth Falls. We headed into Wentworth Falls so I could show Debbie the awesome house that we usually stay at for KCC conventions.

back roads in the mountains are awesome for avoiding traffic! stopped at leura halfway along the fun back road into Katoomba.

From Wentworth Falls, we crossed over the highway and started the fun back road into Katoomba, and stopped at Leura, which was easily the busiest place in the mountains on Anzac Day. We wandered around some shops and bought a couple of presents - I even got to wander through a nice wine cellar! But it was all too expensive. Then it was back on into Katoomba.

driving round the wonderful Cliff Drive looking out the lookouts and taking fun photos.

listening to The Fray.

It wasn’t planned, but we headed down into the depths of Katoomba and drove around Cliff Drive, stopping at most of the lookouts and just enjoying the views and the crazy fog.

up at Mt York… just near Mt Victoria. finally found somewhere to have lunch. stoked that there’s phone reception here!

We drove through Blackheath, stopping to see an awesome house my relatives own and wondering when we should ask them to borrow it for a weekend. Couldn’t find anywhere nice to eat, and so continued up to Mt Victoria. I then remembered someone telling me about how nice Mt York is, and given it’s only 5km away, we headed there.

We found an amazing lookout that no one was at. Unfortunately no picnic tables though, and the ground was a bit slopey. So it was a picnic sitting in the back of the car for us! Quite fun. We enjoyed our cheese and biscuits, pull-apart bread, our premade salads and our apple juice poppers. We had a look down into Hartley Valley for a while from the lookout, but then it was time to start heading back down to Sydney - it had basically taken us 4 hours to get to Mt Victoria :)

Stopped by the Hydro Majestic for a drink, but couldn’t find the cafe part. Now in Leura again looking for a cafe that has a seat.

Lots of police were hanging out near the Hydro doing breath tests… on both sides of the road! But we couldn’t find that nice cafe place, and so we headed back down thinking we might stop at Leura again for a coffee…

never did find a cafe with room. and I was too impatient to wait :) back on the road down the mountains, listening to cat empire.

…but wandering around Leura again found it to be even busier than earlier this morning, and not being the most patient person in the world, and really not wanting to queue for a seat in a cafe, we headed back to the car and continued on down the mountains, with a quick stop for petrol.

home again. nap time.

We actually ended up getting home a lot quicker than I thought we would. That last part of the mountains and then down the M4 always seems quicker each time I drive it. And after lots of driving, I really felt like a nap.

And that was the Commodore’s last big adventure. There’s more to come on that story…

Debbie took plenty of photos, and I’m sure they’ll end up on her facebook tomorrow. They were fun photos.  I’ll post a link soon - cos I still can’t work out why images don’t align properly and why they do weird things on my blog. I think I’m gonna give up on that soon and just get a new theme.

Got myself in another stupid mood where I thought about things too much last night, and ended up getting myself quite stressed and worked up about it. Debbie was here though, and we talked for quite a while about why I’d been like this lately… and eventually I calmed down. She’s very patient with me. I’m quite lucky :)

And then last night was pizza and Phase 10 night with the bible study crew. We ordered pizza, then started down the very long path that is a game of Phase 10. Pizza came and we ate, and kept playing. Dessert was served and we ate, and kept playing. And eventually at 10:30, with the leader having only just gotten phase 6, we decided to call it a night, realising that there was a good chance the game wouldn’t end til well after midnight!

Today is the last day of the week - what a wonderous thing public holidays are. I think we need a public holiday to commemorate the wonder that public holidays are. They’re just so fantastic.

I’m just about to head off down to the smash repairers in Blacktown to finally get my car’s hail damage fixed from back in early December. Today is just a quote, and then I’m hoping they’ll say, “just bring it back in next Tuesday and we’ll do it then and you can pick it up in the afternoon.” That would be very nice. We’ll see.

I sometimes wonder if I think too much. And I think I’ve got myself into a position where my brain just doesn’t stop, and I don’t switch off at night, or when work finishes, or give myself unnecessary obligations. I think I’ve ended up in this position before. And I just need to be more realistic with myself. Cos it gets quite tiring when I don’t stop thinking. And I really end up working myself into stressful situations that I probably don’t need to be in :)

In other news, work today wasn’t too bad actually. A lot of people chose to send emails on the weekend though - don’t like that idea at all. But my only meeting of the day was at 10am; I headed out to Silverwater with the proposal in hand. I wasn’t too worried about the meeting, cos this customer is one of the most relaxed ladies I’ve ever met. Sure enough, she was happy with everything, and I was outta there in less than 15 minutes with basically a verbal go-ahead. Which is pretty awesome for 80 mobile services. So that definitely made my day enjoyable from there on in.

Debbie came for an adventure into the city today, and so we went for lunch at the nice cafe across the road from work. They do the best risottos ever, even if they do cost $20 each. But it was very awesome to just hang out with her for lunch. We went for a walk up Martin Place to the Lindt cafe, where I was keen on one of their (apparently) awesome hot chocolates. But the queue was out the door… so it was back to work for James for a little while longer while Debbie amused herself in the city before home time.

Now… we’re watching GNW that was recorded for us while we visited some friends of Debbie’s for dinner… which was very nice. Lasagne, and then fruit pies for dessert. Wonderful!

Annnd, I’m loving the fact that there’s only 3 days of work left already. Counting down…

Oh yeah, and there is still a Fall Out Boy blog in my head. One day I’ll write it down.

What an exciting Saturday it has been!

Sitting back at Debbie’s place now after a fun afternoon of adventures. Debbie is quite tried (after we both had a rather late night just talking last night) and so is having a nap while I sit here and enjoy their wireless internet and their HDD recorder and watching the V8s from earlier on this afternoon.

The day started with a visit to the Howie’s place to get Ham & Pineapple out of the tank for some in their plastic tubs, and then it was off to Macquarie Centre.

Debbie was in the market for a laptop of her own, and Jenny, Howie and I had made her see that perhaps a Mac was the best option. We wandered to Next Byte, but they told us nothing we didn’t already know or could find out on the internet… and so it was off to JB HiFi to see what they could do. And they sorted us out very nicely :) Debbie got a 2.1Ghz MacBook for $1450 (rather than $1499), MS Office for $200, and a 3 year warranty for $250 (rather than Applecare for $419)! Score indeed.

But Debbie’s fun times were over, and now it was my turn. We headed into Parramatta, and to the Trivett Classic Mini Garage. I sat down with Adam, who has been good to talk to on the phone a few times. But then it was time for the fun of taking one out for a drive. My goodness… most awesome car ever. So many cool features, and it really does feel like a go-kart. The power is amazing for the little engine, and the handling is brilliant. We sat back down and started to go through the options and cost… and that’s going to be the hardest bit now - just working out which options will be nice and which I can do without (for example, I probably don’t need a sunroof for an extra $1900, even though it would be awesome). I now have a new love! ;)

I’ll really only have about 3 months to get everything decided, cos they take 3 months to build apparently… and I don’t really want to be without a car inbetween changing from the Commodore to the Mini. Anyway… very fun, and very exciting :) can’t wait.

Soon it will be dinner time - hooray! Then Debbie will have the fun of setting up her new toy.

I have just been shafted from the kitchen… Debbie is washing up. Not such a bad deal. We’re hanging out at Jen and Howie’s looking after their two awesome turtles while they’re off visiting fun Armidale. And I cooked yummy porkand sweet potato roast thingo… super easy to cook, and it tastes great. I think there’s a good chance it may overtake spaghetti bolognaise as my favourite dish to cook.

Today was a pretty tops Friday. It was pretty flat out this morning, but by lunchtime things seemed to quieten down. We had a lunch for one of the managers that was going on maternity leave, and it seemed that most of my customers decided that Friday lunchtime was a good time to stop working too! Very nice indeed.

Tomorrow will be Mini test driving day. Very exciting :) Pity I can’t get a new lease car until November. Damn patience…

I thought last night as I was feeling very sleepy, “tomorrow’s gonna be a good day.” I have no meetings, no massive issues hanging around my customers, and we get to have Pancakes on the Rocks for lunch too! I’m counting down to that one - only an hour away now. Yum.

And speaking of nice places to eat… b and I headed for Chilis in Wenty on Friday night to have some bottomless chips and dip, bottomless drinks, and food too. But it was quite tragic to arrive, find all the lights off, and then a handwritten sign on the door saying “Restaurant closed. For information, contact [accountant's business card].” And Chili’s Australia website is no longer existant either. Gonna miss that place. Many fun times were had there.

I have enjoyed being able to hang out with Debbie a lot lately. I went round to her place on Monday afternoon after work. She cooked a quite awesome Romano Chicken, which I’d never heard of before… but had 3 large servings of it cos it was so good. And then yesterday, a well timed meeting in Belmore finished up at 3:30pm and so I was home just after 4pm. Debs came round again and we headed off to my Mum & Dad’s place for dinner and a game of Taboo, which, despite my debates, Debbie and I suck at. Good times though.

Work has been pretty decent lately. Monday was a very big day, but only cos I made it that. There was a couple of major issues that had been hanging around for far too long, and so I just decided I wanted to get absolutely everything cleaned up on Monday. It meant for a very intense and full on day, but a very satisfying one nonetheless. I also heard good news about new job starting in mid-May for me on Friday. And it’s been planned out very well so that I can handover my current job to someone over a two week period, which will mean it won’t be stressful at all. Love it.

It seems everyone’s getting on twitter now. Even 131500 have a twitter page where they post Cityrail delays and updates. Cool.

And Playjerise are playing a show again… hooray! I wanted to see them in February when they were playing at a pub up in Katoomba… but I ended up going go-karting instead. Looking forward to seeing them - they are an amazing live duo.

That is about all. Hmm, that was a post with a lot of substance. There is a blog I want to write about Fall Out Boy… but I will save that for another time.

Hooray for a fun weekend.

Saturday was visiting Thornleigh in the morning for Zoe & Tom’s wedding. It was quite lovely indeed, and the random band that entered from all corners of the church singing All You Need Is Love to finish off the service was very funny - well rehearsed and well executed :)

I headed back home to just relax for the arvo while the rest of the people that have known Zoe and Tom for a bit longer than me went to Pyrmont for the reception. I worked through a powerpoint thingo for an item for church tonight for a while before heading back over to Thornleigh to pick up Lachie…

It was time for Swans game! My first ever AFL game.

Lachie and I drove into Pyrmont to pick up Debbie and Jenny, and then began the drive out to Homebush. On the way, poor Jenny started to feel a bit queazy, and so we diverted back to Thornleigh to drop her off and collect Will instead, and then still made it to Homebush by 7pm. Go James!

AFL is actually quite a fun game. And none of this sissy NRL biffo stuff… Barry Hall showed us all how you give someone a solid right-hook [edit: correction, left-hook]. Very funny to watch. And the game itself was quite enjoyable to watch, and the Swans did very well for the first half. The second half of the game was a bit scrappy, but they still won by a mile. I think I will see myself at quite a few AFL games in the future. Fun times indeed.

And then today was massive sleep-in day - 11am. Boo yah. I finished off my powerpoint, and then had some lunch with the boys… and then it was time to head down to the church for band practice. It was a bit hard, but it came together in the end I guess. And I got to play an item with the lovely Ellie and Steve… I was nervous about that, but it was fun and worked nicely. Debbie and Howie came to visit tonight, and we’ve just finished eating pizza and watching Rockwiz.

And that’s my story.

Tomorrow is back to work… but it’s school holidays, so the traffic will be very nice indeed. Maybe I’ll get an early mark.

Glad that things worked out so I could work from home today.

I didn’t end up going to bed until about 2am last night. One of those moments when Debbie and I just started talking, and it was kinda necessary at the time, and so sleep took a back seat. That’s ok… moments like that are pretty awesome.

It does mean that I am utterly shattered today, and even more so cos last night’s Kedron meeting was a bit mentally exhasting as well. Lots of people there, and quite a few newbies too - but the new people have big personalities, and have lots to contribute. But combine that with people that have been doing camps with us for a few years, and who are bringing newer and better ideas, and it was very intense. Still, it’s going to be a spectacular camp.

Lunchtime is near. And that will be my cue to go and lay on the couch for an hour and have a nap. Hopefully there won’t be too much work to do this arvo.

Fun weekend it has been.

Yesterday, Debbie and I had our great big markets adventure. We started off at the Fox Studios markets in Moore Park. I loved them, cos they’re all food stalls. Lots of cheese, pasta, coffee, vegetables, desserty type things. Yum. But Debbie was keen for more “markets” type things, like artsy stuff and clothes and such. So we then ventured off to Paddington Markets, which were actually quite cool. There was some amazing photography there - this one stand had beautiful beach type photos, but block mounted and printed on canvas. They cost a lot of money, but they were awesome.

And then it was off to a BBQ with Debbie’s teacher friends. It was a great night, and I enjoyed meeting all these people that I’d heard so much about. As is inevitable when you get a bunch of teachers together, many stories involving kids doing stupid things, or saying stupid things surfaced and made for many laughs. Hearing all those stories made me realise how naive I, and every other kid for that matter, was as a school! Teachers are so sneaky sometimes.

Right now, I’m enjoying listening to Fall Out Boy’s cover of Beat It. Even though I’ve heard it 27 times this week on the radio. And thinking that I might take a small break from thinking about church and stuff tonight, and watch some of the live Fall Out Boy DVD that I bought on Friday.

What a highly productive and wonderful Friday it has been. Started the day early, cos I knew I wanted to take off after lunchtime and finish the day not in the office. Got through quite a few emails, and then headed off to some training on some industrial type modems for Next G. Quite interesting.

I headed over to the Pitt St office to be my boss’s IT monkey, but then we decided to try and get her new laptop sorted on Monday. And so I hung around there annoying her for a little bit before I came round here to Debbie’s place to do some more work. She’s not feeling to well at the moment, so I decided it would be fun to come and keep her company on a Friday afternoon and just finish of the day of work quietly.

But then the awesomeness began. Earlier in the day, I’d gotten an email from Turramurra Music man telling me that my keyboard case had arrived. It was tempting to get very excited early on… but I’d been down this path before and had my heart broken. So I refrained from being all excited until I actually saw it.

So once some more work had been done, Debbie and I set off for Turramurra Music. I found the guy who I’d been emailing, and he referred to me as “the guy with the blog.” I was puzzled for a second, but if you read my previous post, you’ll note a guy who commented - I emailed him back letting him know that I’d taken the case back to Turramurra Music, and so he called them letting them know that he’d read on my blog that there was a smaller case that I’d taken back! Funny story. Guess you had to be there.

But the nice Turramurra Music man eventually walked downstairs and out the back and returned with a box, and inside was my glorious keyboard case… right size and all! Happy boy am I. Can’t wait to get home and actually put a keyboard inside it. And probably take it back out again, cos I don’t need to take it anywhere right now.

And that is why today was a good Friday.

Quite funny :)

Read the rest of this entry »

Crap use of apostrophes #4,566,932: on the front page of smh.com.au.

Idiots.

Huzzah that the weekend is here. I’ve been a bit quiet over the last few days…

The last couple of days of work weren’t too bad. Thursday definitely could’ve been better - I was yet again reminded that sales is such a selfish world, and it’s sometimes so hard to be there.

But Friday was Friday - my morning that I thought was going to be very busy turned out to be not-so-bad. And after a great catch up lunch with a friend from Melbourne who came to visit, I was outta there. I headed out to Rouse Hill to pick up Debbie after she’d been away on school camp for 3 days. But as I was nearing Rouse Hill, she messaged me to say the buses were running a little late. So as the light bulb went off in my head, I turned right off Windsor Rd and down into the new Rouse Hill Town Centre shopping centre.

It. Is. Awesome.

The parking alone is so very simple, and I love the little lights above every parking spot so it’s fairly easy to find a free one. But that extends to each row, and as you drive through the carpark, there’s signs above you telling you how many free spots are down that row. So awesome. It would suck when people get used to it, and then they have a blackout - Rouse Hill shoppers wouldn’t know how to park! I went for a quick wander up in the shops, and was excited to find a Coffee Emporium. But the place is definitely massive, and I really want to go back to wander round more.

Anyway, this morning I’m heading off to a 21st for a friend of Debbie’s. A friend I haven’t met yet. So that will be awkward for the first little bit :) But it’s a champagne breakfast… and I’ve never been to a champagne breakfast before. So that will be fun! 

I’m polishing off the last two Burritos from Monday night in a very hurried fashion… cos I’m about to collect B2 and head off to Homebush for the finals of the Australian Swimming Championships! There were a bundle of tickets left over at work today, and so I scored a couple. Looking forward to it :)

Today was quite the up and down day though…

There’s a sale that will make or break my month - if it comes through, I will smash my numbers, if it doesn’t, then I will fail quite miserably. Seems silly to put my eggs in one basket, but there’s a long story behind that. The frustrating thing is that the customer has given us the verbal agreement with the deal. But we’re not allowed to close the sale in our system (and thus count towards my numbers for this month) until we have a signed contract. And the earliest that contract will be in our hands is Monday - the 31st; the last day of the month - because of stuff ups with our pricing guys. Very annoying. And it shall be a very nervous wait…

Other crapness was just annoying customers seeming to descend on me all in a 2 hour period in the late morning/early arvo.

But good stuff what happened…

• Getting tickets to the swimming tonight!
• Realising I have enough reward points in an incentive program at work to buy a hard-disc recorder!
• Job type things that were thought about much earlier in the year seem to be making a bit of headway again. And just general people changes at work are quite exciting and will be.
• Scored myself a new phone - the iMate Ultimate 8502. Came out on Monday. It’s a little beast of a thing - wifi, GPS, HSUPA (7.2Mbps download and 1.9Mbps upload speeds) - definitely the most powerful PDA around at the moment. It’s a bit heavy and big, but I’m enjoying giving it a run.

Onto the second burrito… then it will be time to go.

Halfway through the long weekend, and it’s been tops.

Yesterday was off to Debbie’s place for lunch with her family and grandparents and aunty too. I got there early after Good Friday church, so I got to have a mid-morning nap on Debbie’s very comfy mattress. The whole meeting extended family thing was made a whole lot easier with Jen and Howie being present, and it was fun being Howie’s teammate to pick on Debbie :D But her grandparents were very lovely and lunch was awesome. And I found out this morning that Grandma approves of me! Score.

And then yesterday was catching up with a few people round at Alexis’ place. A couple of Kedron people, but just a handful of other friends of friends, and it just made for a fun group to hang out with and have dinner. We got to play an awesome game called “Work To Do”, which you play round a pool table with the cue ball and one other ball. Incredibly hard to explain, but it was very energetic and hilarious. Great times.

Today didn’t have much planned during the day - but after a mammoth post 11am sleep in, I picked up Debbie and headed out to Koorong, where I got myself a new bible - I bought a TNIV/Message parallel. I have wanted a Message bible for a while, and in borrowing one for a week and a bit, I decided that The Message alongside an NIV is very, very awesome. And then we headed into Hornsby Westfield to buy some things, have some sushi, and free gelato to finish the afternoon off nicely.

And finally tonight was a catch up dinner with all the Kedron leaders from July last year, plus a couple of welcome extras! We headed to Gordon for some Thai food… and it was just beautiful food. Definitely some of the best massaman beef I’ve ever had. And then a bit of drive further up the north shore to St Ives for dessert at Max Brenner. It was tops to catch up with people… it seems to be the theme this weekend :)

Church day tomorrow. Instruments 2 and 3 will be played: #1 was acoustic on Friday; #2 will be keys in the morning; #3 will be bass tomorrow night. Awesome stuff… can’t wait for it :D

I’m done with thinking for 4 days. How awesome is that.

I was thinking about it at work this arvo. And it was just fantastic to get home from the piano course this evening and just realise that I don’t need to do much thinking at all for 4 whole days. I guess you could say I still have to think when I play keys and bass on Sunday… but that’s creative and very fun thinking, so that doesn’t count.

Tomorrow is just the start of a very busy long weekend though - lots of catching up with people and having great hang-out times. Tomorrow is church in the morning before heading to Debbie’s place for lunch with her family, and then off to hang out at Lexi’s place with a few people catch up with them - been many months since we’ve really caught up, so it will be fantastic.

Right now though, I need to sleep. 

It’s been a couple of days of training at work. I’m not usually a fan of training at work. Mainly because I’m not given a choice whether or not to go, but I pretty much still have my normal day job to do. So after training, I usually end up spending the next few days working really long days to catch up.

But not only was this training actually valuable - I did the Think On Your Feet training course - but it’s quite clearly a quiet week in the world today. I sent my regular customers an email early on Tuesday morning letting them know what to do instead of emailing me - usually this is almost pointless, cos for some reason they ignore it. But most of them actually listened this time round! So in the end, two days of pretty cool training (and it was even finished by 2:30pm this arvo), half an hour back at my desk doing a little bit of work, and I’ve got no work to catch up on!

The only disappointing thing is that cos I was on training I missed out on hearing John Dickson come and speak in my office!! I was so excited to get an email saying that he was coming to speak on Tuesday (and today he spoke at the Pitt St office). And I was even more excited to walk past the auditorium as I got a lunch break (only as he was finishing up) and see that there was a good 200 people in that auditorium :D

He was there speaking about the facts of Easter, pre-empting his The Christ Files documentary that is on Channel 7 on Friday arvo. I’m really looking forward to that - have a great admiration for him. He’s a very, very educated man and I really enjoy hearing him speak. Should be tops.

Massive shoutout to the long weekend that’s on its way - 4 days working, 4 days off, 4 days working… that’s an awesome combo. 4-day weekend deserves brilliance and wonder showered on it for that. Let alone for the reason that it’s a 4-day weekend - that just makes it the single best time of the year :)

Mondays haven’t been too bad of late. That’s mainly been because Monday evenings have been Debbie and my evening for dinner together - so my day has always had something pretty cool at the end of it to look forward to.

Today is doubly good, because as well as hanging out with Debbie soon, I also get to head off to La Porchetta this evening with bible study peoples to enjoy all-you-can-eat pasta! I called it no-lunch-Monday. Good times a plenty shall be had tonight I think :)

Today has just generally been a nice day - the customers have been a bit quiet, and the emails haven’t been overly shocking, which is always a plus, no matter what day of the week it is. I was supposed to have an hour and a half phone meeting at 3pm. And I thought that would be far more bareable from the comfort of my couch… so I began my trek home a couple of hours ago… but just as I was leaving, they cancelled it! So score one for me: I’m already home and just doing a couple more emails before I log out of work and relax on my couch :)

I was trying to chase Turramurra Music up for my keyboard case this arvo, and went to their website to grab their email address. While I was there, I got severly distracted… The Nord C1 Organ. A two-tiered organ with thre modelled vintage organs. It looks stunning, and the sound clips on the site from it are just amazing. But alas, it costs a fortune (about $4.5k) and I really don’t need it. The other distraction was looking at the updates for my keyboard - yep, I can just download a couple of files, and update the sounds in my keyboard to newer samples. There’s even a full OS update being released soon, which is very exciting.

I’ve been really getting into keyboard weeks lately at church. I’m loving the fact that every week I play, I’m always wanting to try something new - last fortnight it was really pushing the B3 organ sound, and using that as a background sorta sound. And this week was doing a fair bit more with syth sounds, and also having a bit of fun with a distorted Wurlitzer (oh how I would love an original Wurlitzer electric piano - their sound would be amazing). And it’s been fun working out how to make the most of the two keyboards, and thinking ahead more to using them at the same time. Loving it.

What a busy few days it has been. Friday was quite an awesome day… the morning was filled with quite a bit of work, but as sometimes happens on Friday, after lunch, everyone just switched off and we chilled out a bit for the afternoon. At 4pm was a bit of a function where one of the senior managers was announcing 4 new manager positions for our wider team. And so some of us decided that it would increase the excitement levels if we ran an office sweep! We got all 32 names of the people within Telstra who went for the jobs, and then put them in a hat and ran a $5 sweep. It made for a very fun afternoon :)

Yesterday was a city day - Debbie and I headed in to meet Mum, Dad, my sister and her fiancé at the James Squire Brewhouse on King St Wharf for lunch. Very, very awesome food - I had a steak that was cooked to perfection. Dad had similar and it was also perfect too. It’s so satisfying when you get a steak that is perfect. After lunch we hung out downstairs in the “pub” bit and played some pool and had some laughs which was fun :)

Afterwards, Debbie and I headed up the road a bit to Ultimo to see GNW being filmed! So exciting… I’d been looking forward to this for a long, long time. There wasn’t as much waiting as I’d thought - we met Tom and Howie there at about 4:30, and by 5:30 we were inside on the couches, and then by 6pm we were in the studio ready for them to start taping. They only filmed one episode this week (they have filmed two episodes each filming for the last few fortnights) because they’re having a couple of weeks off - presumeably because of non-ratings easter time. But it was pretty funny. I can’t wait to see it on Monday and see how they edited it together - cos there’s so much that can’t go to air. The most interesting bit will be whether or not the part where Jimoein mooned us from inside the sound-proof booth makes it to air.

But it was a great Saturday all in all! Lots of fun.

And now it is time for me to start making a move… I need to have me some lunch soon, then head down to the church and set up my keyboards, before heading down to the airport to say farewell to Robbie for two years!

Last night was the first night I led a service at church. Something that had been coming for quite a while…

B had mentioned it to me about 18 months ago, at which time, I wasn’t overly keen on the idea, and conveniently brushed it aside and chose to forget about it. And I thought he’d forgotten about it too. Hehe, I was wrong - he and God are crafty. And last year, God used a few different things to get me thinking about it more and more and even got me to the point where I was keen for it.

I spent a lot of last week thinking about what I would say, and how I would tie songs together, and what “God” things I should say… But then I realised that all that is pretty unimportant - I don’t need to have a speech or mini-sermon rehearsed. In fact I don’t need to say much at all aside from one or two welcome lines. And so I spent a lot of time thinking and praying about band practice and realising that my attention needed to be focused on leading that well. Kinda glad I came to that realisation, cos it was the right one.

And band practice went awesomely smoothly (thanks, God!). We powered through the songs, even worked on a fun transition (that ended up getting dumped at the last minute, but it was still cool teamwork), and still had time in the middle to practice a new song that we’re going to do with the church in a few weeks.

So for my first week leading a service, I ended up feeling very happy with how it went, and looking forward to how God’s going to use me more and more at church with music and services :)

And then it was off to level 4 at Westpoint to get some noodles (or Nandos if you so desired) and just hang out at the seat things in the middle of the piazza area like a cool gang. Yeah, we were cool.

After such a tops Sunday, it was a pity that this morning started off crap. Stupid Epping stupid road was stupid narrowed down to stupid 1 lane. Morris Iemma is a goose. I used to be a bit indifferent towards him… but I am rapidly joining the bandwagon of “get us a new premier, pronto”. Anyway, I reckon because of Epping Rd being narrowed, everyone went down other roads… namely my precious Victoria Rd. So my normal 1 hour drive into the city took 2 hours this morning. Not fun.

And then to hear on the radio that there is an early idea floating around to charge motorists for using main aterial roads during the peak times? Above and beyond the existing tolls?! What a joke! That is honestly the most insane idea that I have heard come from the NSW Government. The main reason that I think it is so insane is that our public transport system is nothing short of pathetic. It’s fine and dandy if you live within 10kms of the CBD. Lucky you. However, anyone outside that radius is subject to private bus companies who don’t operate very reliable or conveient routes, and trains that are constantly over-crowded. (Speaking of which, if I have to use a main arterial road to drive 15 minutes to the nearest train station to catch a train to the city, are you going to charge me a “congestion toll” too?)

Morris is a goose. Rant over.

correction: The “congestion toll” seems to be at the federal govt level rather than state. Which is good news I reckon. K-Rudd will sort it out. He’s a good boy.

It’s lunch time now - I’m sitting here eating some chicken pasta with sun-dried tomatoes in a white wine sauce - and the emails have subsided and I’m feeling dramatically more cheery than I did this morning. Looking forward to heading home shortly though to enjoy an evening of nothingness - just hanging out with Debbie and watching GNW. :)