/karen/

Story: 15/9/08-21/9/08

Friday, 17 October, 2008

Monday 15/9/08

Another week. I was up at 6:15. I really needed more sleep but because I had so much sleep the night before, it was hard to go to sleep.

I was in at work by 7. We had no cereal in the house, but fortunately for me, Wendy had brought in all these little boxes of Cornflakes that her children had rejected so I had one of those. I was trying to get on track again with Bible reading and prayer, but Carson's For the Love of God was no longer online. So I did the reading and prayer part (and even put my prayer cards online, but I've amended the htaccess file so hopefully search engines won't be able to find them) but not the Carson part.

Email and Sola Panel stuff followed, and I realised nothing had gone up on Saturday so I called Tony. He was not going to be in that day and Elsie had to cancel. This was somewhat fortuitous because, once again, I didn't have any lunch so had to go buy some (Oporto's, which wasn't great but it was cheap). I got The Briefing (October) off to the printer (which meant it was finally out of my hands!) Then I dealt with various little things.

Results from the Bible reading survey started trickling in and the responses were both fascinating and a real rebuke to my own rather lax Bible reading habits.

I left work at 4, went home, picked up Ben and together we faced the shops. We bought fruit and vegetables, fish, meat and groceries from Woolworths. (It just occurred to me there's a distinct lack of wool in Woolworths.) At home, we carried it all upstairs and unpacked. I chopped up three kilos of chicken while watching So You Think You Can Dance? (US). Ben made dinner. Then we watched The Life of Mammals together (“Life in the trees”). I played with Wii Fit for 45 minutes (and got a 100% burn rate on the running! I think it was because I put the remote in my pocket instead of holding it) and had a shower. Ben was watching Boston Legal in the bedroom. Then I tried to go to bed at a respectable hour.

Tuesday 16/9/08

Day off!—my first in a long while. I tried to get up at 8:15 (i.e. 8 hours of sleep; Wii Fit recommends 7.5 hours on average) but I couldn't get up until 10:30. I had a shower, did laundry, ate breakfast, read the Bible and prayed, and then realised that the dust build-up on our floors was not good; it was starting to look (and act) like tumbleweed. (It's probably contributing to our ill health.) So I vacuumed the entire house and dusted some problem hours.

I had a break for lunch and watched the rest of So You Think You Can Dance? so that I was up to date. And then I turned on my computer, error-checked the hard drive and did a disk clean up (yes, computer housekeeping to go with the regular kind) while sorting yarns and updating my knitting folder. I also swept the steps downstairs because the build-up of leaves was annoying me.

For dinner, I made quiche with soy milk and played with Wii Fit for 30 minutes while it was cooking in the oven. It came out rather odd but still edible. We watched Australian Idol, then I did some blogging. But then I stayed up reading blogs for too long. I had a shower and went to bed, but couldn't sleep because I'd slept 10 hours the night before. Sigh.

Wednesday 17/9/08

I was up at 6:15. I ate breakfast, read my Bible and prayed, and drove in to work, arriving by 7:30. I scored the prime parking spot which made me rather happy. I dealt with email, Bible reading survey responses, worked out how to use .htaccess to redirect my old blog feeds to my new blog feed (though I suspect I've lost blog readers in the process, or it could be that no one reads blogs anymore), and then moved onto Briefing things: article assessment, chasing commissions, then cleaning the interview Tony did with Don Carson on Christianity and culture (which coincided nicely with the studies my Bible study group were doing on culture). I ate lunch, then met with Elsie to read the Bible and pray. Then I left for counselling and got there in half an hour, so spent the rest of the time knitting in the waiting room.

Counselling was okay. I feel like I don't express myself very well. I also realised I'm still sad about what happened with my old church. Afterwards, I drove back to work in fairly good traffic (i.e. it only took 35-40 minutes, as opposed to the hour it normally does). I continued cleaning up the Carson interview, feeling really tired in the late afternoon. I left at 6:30 to go to Bible study and found myself the first one there.

For once, everyone was there. We thought about evangelism, the subversive message of the gospel, and the subversive messenger of that gospel. We had prayer time and I ended up crying. Then I drove home, had a shower and went to bed.

Thursday 18/9/08

I was in at 7:30, and ate breakfast, read my Bible and prayed there. Work was the usual (I think). We had staff lunch (I forget what) and then I brainstormed ideas for Bible brief topical studies with Guan. I then worked on Briefing meeting minutes and booked tickets for Lisa Mitchell at The Basement for Ben's birthday.

I left work at 5:30 and drove to Paddington. At the the intersection of Anzac Parade and Moore Park Road, something weird happened: I was first at the lights but the light was still red, and then it felt like the car behind me bumped into me. I looked behind me but couldn't work out what had happened. The lights changed to green and I continued on my way, and the car behind me followed me for a bit. I wasn't sure what to do, but after a while, it kept going. I parked and inspected the damage, but there wasn't any so maybe it was all okay.

Parking in Paddington was only an annoying 1 hour. I figured that's when I should probably go home anyway. I went to the Australian Centre for Photography to hear a panel on Web 2.0 in review. It was really interesting stuff because the panel consisted of three artists who not only knew a bit about Web 2.0, they were also creating artworks and exploring issues to do with the internet, the virtual and the real, representations of the self (avatars, etc.) and the way relationships develop (they were Kate Richards, Kathy Cleland and Gary Hayes). I would have liked to stay for the whole thing, but I was on a time limit, and I left just before they opened it up for questions.

I drove home. Ben had made stir fried mince for dinner. I sat and watched TV for a bit, then went on the computer to do things like print a packing list, look up the weather for the weekend and get directions. Then I got to packing. We went to bed around midnight having almost finished packing.

Friday 19/9/08

I rose around 8, had a shower and finished the packing. We got in to work a little later than planned. I finished Briefing minutes (I've decided I don't like doing them) and moved onto Faithful Writer finances (woohoo, we're not in the red!) I also edited Sola Panel posts and dealt with my email. Then we had lunch.

It was nearly time to go, so I went out and bought a powerboard and batteries, and then remembered he needed a card for his mum. This meant we didn't get away until 4. And, of course, the M5 was totally packed. I was glad Ben was driving; I fell asleep and only woke up when we were well along the Federal Highway.

We took the turn off near Sutton Forest for Bundanoon and drove through the countryside in the dark. We arrived at the Bundanoon Hotel just in time. The Southern Highlands always seems a bit odd to me: it's Scotland and Scottishness transplanted onto the Australian landscape, and it doesn't quite work. But all the houses in that sort of Tudor style, and the names of everything are reminiscent of Brigadoon or some such thing.

The rest of the family had already arrived. We were sharing a little room with another party of mostly men. We waited for Roy and Jenny who were running late, and then we ordered. The food took 45 minutes to arrive and they completely forgot my meal. Everyone else was ordering dessert while I was finishing. I decided to forgo dessert but mostly so the Wii couldn't pick up on me the next time I stepped on it.

We followed Hans and Cathy's car back to the house (Morvern Valley Guest House). We unloaded and unpacked. Ben and I had the room just off the kitchen—the “school room”, complete with desks, slates and chalk:

—and cow dolls.

Lizz had the room next to ours—the dining room with a little bed in the corner:

We all gathered in the lounge room and had tea and hot chocolate (mint hot chocolate, even!), and I broke out the Wii. Lizz and I played a few games of Wii Play, much to the others' amusement. And then we went to bed.

Saturday 20/9/08

The roosters and their brood of chickens woke us at around 4 am and then again at 6. Pity you can't hit the snooze button on a rooster; they're made to behave that way. I think we also overheated a bit so we didn't sleep very well. We were up at 8:30 because the walls were paper thin which meant you could hear everything. So if everyone else was up, there wasn't much point in trying to sleep any longer because you couldn't. Here are some photos I took of the house in daylight:

So I got up, got dressed and made myself some breakfast. The toaster printed smiley faces on your toast which was rather cute. Unfortunately there was not enough bacon for all of us, and we couldn't work out how to get into the other pen to get eggs from the other chickens. (The two roosters can't be out at the same time because they fight. Silly males.)

Hans and Cathy went to the shop for supplies. Everyone else got up in their absence. They soon returned with some cereal, more bread and soy milk for Ben, then went out to find a suitable picnic spot for Cathy's 60th birthday lunch. The girls had been allocated to get food whereas the boys were to babysit the picnic spot until the guests arrived. Hans and Cathy were going to find a place in Bundanoon with good mobile reception so they could direct people where to go.

Bundanoon didn't have much of a supermarket, so Lizz, Ros and I decided to drive to Moss Vale which was about 18 kilometres away. We found the IGA in one of the backstreets and fortunately it was a good one. Then we went to a local bakery to get bread, and then drove back to Bundanoon and into Moreton National Park. It was a $7 ticket to park, and we followed the dirt road all the way to Echo Point where we found all the others. Tim and Ros had come equipped with esky, portable barbecue, chopping board and knife, so Lizz and I helped chop up the salad ingredients and the rest of the lunch things. Tim barbecued the sausages, bacon, pineapple and onions, and I buttered the bread.

The rest of the guests started showing up, and we all sat down to eat together (the guests had brought their own food; we weren't catering for everyone). After lunch, we walked around a bit—going to the lookout and then doing a short walk to another lookout further out into the valley—and I took heaps of photos of wildflowers:

We had cake and sang Happy Birthday to Cathy, then took some group photos. Then all of us kids headed back to the house because we were, understandably, rather tired (Ros had a valid excuse because she's pregnant). The rest of them had a nap, but I went and read Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach and finished it (and enjoyed it too; he writes very well). Hans and Cathy returned a bit later with Bob and Judy who stayed for a coffee. While they were there, birds came to roost on the porch:

Bob and Judy had to leave to drive home. Hans and Cathy decided to take a walk in the paddock, and they encouraged me to come too to feed the horses. Unfortunately I slipped on a particularly muddy bit and got mud all over my backside. Good grief, that's the second time in a month and a half that I've fallen over. Wii Fit is right: I am unbalanced.

Anyways, we continued on to feed the horses carrots that the owners had left in the fridge. Unfortunately they were rather aggressive horses, and one of them was certain I had the carrots and kept grabbing whatever I was holding and whatever was in my pocked with his? her? teeth.

Beautiful horse, though.

We headed back inside, and I changed and washed my muddy clothes in the antiquated laundry tubs. Unfortunately the bulb had blown in the laundry so I had to do it in the dark.

For dinner, Hans and Cathy went out to get takeaway Chinese locally. It seems that everyone else in Bundanoon had the same idea because it took a while. None of us were particularly hungry, however. After dinner, I suggested watching Howl's Moving Castle. Some of us were keen but others weren't so keen. However, by the end, everyone was watching it. (And we stopped halfway through to eat cherry pie and cream/ice cream for dessert.)

Afterwards, I had a shower, then played some Wii with Lizz, then packed up the Wii in anticipation of the following day when we'd have to be out of the house by 10. I read a bit of Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird and then we went to bed.

Sunday 21/9/08

The rooster woke us again at 4 am, but we went back to sleep again. Ben slept very badly but I slept better. We slept in as long as possible, and then realised we were running out of time. I tried to make some sort of breakfast for me, Ben and Lizz, but my skills at bacon and eggs are pretty terrible. We finished packing while Hans and Cathy went out to chat to the owners to buy us some more time. Then we went up to join them—to meet the owners and say hi to the baby alpacas (very cute! I can see why people want to have them as pets.)

We loaded the car and said goodbye, then headed back to Sydney. Back at home, we unpacked, tied up and then I went to church. I sat with Michelle and Kirsty and came home straight after because I was tired. I had leftovers for dinner and watched So You Think You Can Dance? (US) and a bit of Idol, then part of Rove with Ben when he came home from church. I also finished the Branching out scarf and went to bed.

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