/karen/

Ataraxia

Sunday, 01 July, 2007

(Definition.)

This week has been fun because Ben has been coming to work with me! It makes me happy that we're doing the same thing again—if only for a short amount of time—because we used to do the same thing and we saw each other a lot more often than we do now. It was great when we both worked at UNSW because we would travel in together and travel home together, and we both understood each other's job because we were doing pretty much exactly the same things but in different faculties. And it great doing MTS together in Wollongong (even though that was hard) and college together at Moore for much the same reasons. 2006 was the first year when we suddenly weren't doing stuff together any more and only saw each other in the evenings when we came home.

Ben coming to work has meant I've been starting slightly later though and I think it's mucking up my productivity a little. (That and Facebook. Yes, I caved and now I have 74 friends [Ben has 103]. Let us not speak of this again.) I tried in vain to get The Daily Reading Bible (Volume 12) done this week but then hit a brick wall so I will have to try again this week. But I did manage to get Just for Starters 2 done and off my plate. And then there was Briefing stuff to do on Friday, endless CHNs (not written by me) and problems with the online store which meant I couldn't send out Briefing e-news (that's tomorrow's job).

Monday we went to Tho's for lunch (where Ben ate raw pork—Tho's favourite food—and then freaked out about it later) and then Pinocchio's for dinner and then New College for the ISCAST/CASE lecture on Darwinism, Creationism, Intelligent Design and Theistic Evolution lecture. It was very interesting and it helped that the speakers tag-teamed one another—the change every so often helped me to pay attention.

Tuesday was lots of CASE work where it slowly dawned on me how much I'm going to have to do for The Faithful Writer conference (I hope people register early—hint hint. I also hope we get at least 20 more registrations—hint hint hint.) I left a little later than planned (bad sign!) and drove to Westfield Bondi Junction in the rain to buy an electric blanket with my birthday money (and I'm so glad I did! There are few things in life as wonderful as getting into a toasty warm bed on a cold cold night!), Suddenly 30 on DVD, four white soup bowls and four soup Chinese soup spoons. (When we got married, we didn't have a wedding registry but in hindsight, I probably should have realised that the majority of our guests, not being Asian, wouldn't have thought to buy us stuff like Chinese soup spoons, chopsticks, and soup bowls big and deep enough for things like won ton noodle soup. After we got married, I bought us two of those bowls and four Chinese soup spoons, but we've since broken two.) I had a very pleasant evening at home doing various computer-type things I don't remember and watching Grey's Anatomy and going to bed early.

Wednesday evening we went to Naomi and Simon's for dinner, and then to Pilates. Naomi and I prayed together afterwards, and then she made yummy soufflé for dessert.

Thursday we were late to work because Ben was feeling sick, and then later than expected home again. Ben decided not to go hear Greg talk on Dawkins and The God Delusion at All Soul's Leichhardt because he needed to work on his sermon for Sunday. I was going to go to my make up Pilates class at that time but since he wasn't going and I had missed the 6 pm class, I decided not to go at all and just stayed home, watching television all evening.

Friday was Friday Thai Day with AFES (yay!), and then Elsie and I met to read the Bible and pray. In the face of the world's preoccupation with money, career, getting ahead and “keeping up with the Joneses”, 1 Timothy 6:17-19 is such a comforting passage. I didn't have counselling because my counsellor was away so we worked until 5, drove home in silly traffic and then cleaned up the house in preparation for people coming over for my jewellery party. There were eight of us for dinner (we ordered in Thai, plus I made coconut basil chili chicken) and then 12 people for the party. It actually went fairly well, considering the number of people and the small amount of space we had. After getting a bit lost, the girl who was teaching us to make jewellery (Taz) managed to get to our place and set up everything. She had base prices for making the jewellery (so if you only wanted to make earrings, you paid $x plus the cost of the beads, and obviously the more you made, the cheaper it was. I chose to make a set—earrings, bracelet and necklace). And I found that actually putting them together was fairly simple once you got the hang of it (photos to come later). Everyone left at around 11 and there wasn't much to clean up because Ben had done most of it already (thank you Ben!).

Saturday we got up early and Ben went to the church prayer breakfast whereas I went to my make up Pilates class. The instructor on Saturdays is this young woman who is extremely good at Pilates. Unfortunately she seems to expect everyone to be at the same level as her, so we would do one exercise and go straight on to the next and the next one and the next one. We were doing The Hundreds at the halfway point in the class (I think The Hundreds is probably one of the hardest—if not the hardest—Pilates exercise you can do). At that point, I felt like I was going to die if I didn't have a break, so I stopped and rested for a bit, and I think that made her realise she was pushing us a little too hard because the second half of the class was a little less intense.

When Ben came home after the prayer breakfast, we went for a walk down to Webba, the café near Annandale, and had a hot chocolate (it was an okay hot chocolate). We came home and had lunch while watching NCIS, then Ben spent the afternoon writing his sermon (or trying to write his sermon) while I ended up watching lots of television and then Mean Girls while knitting the collar of Jess's cardigan. In the evening we watched Law & Order over dinner, then Ben went back to sermon writing. I had finished doing all the knitting of the cardigan by the end of the day. Now the ends just need to be woven in and the button sewn on. Oh, and I'm wondering if I need to block it. I'll see if it fits Jess okay tomorrow and then decide on the blocking later.

Today we slept in, then I did laundry and cooked lunch and tried to get through my To Do list but instead ended up watching Wimbledon on DVD (courtesy of George). Band practice was at 5 and it went pretty quickly for some reason. Ben preached excellently on Ezekiel 36, then dropped me home so he could go out with church friends to Newtown. I ended up doing CASE work and blogging.

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