Thursday night I went down to Warrnambool to visit the Scripture Union teams that are down there at the moment. (I cam back yesterday morning for work.)
At the primary school where they're having Champion City (the kids program) they have really interesting gardens:
I spent most of my time there with the Ignite (the youth program) team. Friday afternoon/evening we were at the beach playing volleyball and cricket and getting sand in our eyes and ears and mouth and nose.
Very late last night, when everyone was home, we had drinks on the roof, and Ray brought out a birthday cake she'd made for me. It was shaped like Dr Pompo, on TV:
You can also see the other Dr Pompos that Ray made, one from a real pumpkin (it's all shrivelled up now) and the other from a pumpkin pot. (Ray likes Dr Pompo a lot.)
After work today Dad came over and had a look at our garden. Then Mum and Adam and Justin came in on the train, and Nomes got back from the beach and we had Chinese food for tea. Adam gave me a bootleg of the U2 show we went to. Justin gave me some spray paint. Mum and Dad gave me some money to get some shoes. Nomes gave me two more souvienir teaspoons, one of which is from Avocado Land, which I actually went to as a toddler. (It's called Tropical Fruit World now though.) So now my teaspoon rack is full. (Paul and Amber brought me back one when they went to Canberra last year.)
Today's my birthday. (I've actually had quite a lot of unexpected birthdays in the last year, but this is the day that I was actually born on.)
Nathan gave me this:
(Explanation: Tomsy wanted me to get a mullet for his wedding, and so a heap of people were trying to get me to get a mullet, before I got it cut for the G20.)
On Friday afternoon me and Boonie caught the 5:30 bus to Deniliquin. We stopped in Heathcote, where I was pleased to find there were shoes on the powerlines:
Took these between Heathcote and Echuca-Moama:
We met Ray and Ben in Deniliquin at about 10pm, and they gave us a lift to the Confest site, which was at a river near Moulamein. Our camp was on the other side of the river from the car park, so we had to use a barge to get across.
I ended up sleeping on the ground, because Ben had been going to bring a tent for Boonie or something, but he hadn't, so Boonie used the tent I'd brought.
This time there were a lot less workshops going on, and I wasn't really interested in any of them, so I ended up spending a lot of time in the river and and just hanging out at the camp, enjoying being out of the city.
On New Years Eve, after we had tea, Stella (she's moving in with us in a couple of weeks) was using these glow poi:
At midnight I was watching the fire-twirlers, and I went to bed not long after. I didn't sleep very much though, because it rained all night.
On the way back to Melbourne yesterday I got some avocado-free guacamole-flavoured chips in Deniliquin ...
... we had to stop because there were goats on the road ...
... me and Ben had breadcrust earrings ...
... and in Elmore Baby Jesus was in a cage.
We got home at about 10:30pm or something.
And my tomatoes are ripening.
I'm going up to Confest for New Years. Me and Boonie are catching the bus to Deniliquin tonight, and Ray is going to give us a lift from there to Confest. Will probably be coming back Monday night.
Went and saw Eragon just before, and it's absolute rubbish. Some of the special effects are okay, but the script, acting, plot, charcterisation, costumes and pretty much everything else are awful. It's very similar to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.
Another problem I had with it (which is a problem I have with most fantasy narratives) is that it's a version of the myth of redemptive violence. It says that there are people groups (whether they're orcs or Muslims or Americans) that are purely evil, and that by destroying these people a perfect world can be created.
On Thursday we had the Credo Christmas party, down by the Yarra.
Marcus ranted at us for a bit ...
... and poured water all over the table ...
... and gave little cricket bats to some guys from the cricket team.
Ali and Luke and Kate handed out presents ...
... and then we had lunch together.
We packed up at about three o'clock or something, and then headed to the Vic for our last staff drinks of the year.
Yesterday morning I cleaned the laneway, and then caught the train out east to visit my family.
I gave Adam a watermelon for Christmas:
Justin gave me a t-shirt, which I think is meant to make me look scary:
As you can see, I also ended up with some weird 'Christmassy' things that Mum had been given by people. (They should make good Crap Cringle presents.)
Grandma (Mum's mum) and Uncle Mike (Mum's brother) came over for lunch.
For tea we went to Uncle Ian (Dad's brother) and Aintie Jenny's house.
This is me and my brothers and our cousins and our cousins' partners (some people are missing though):
(Note that Adam is doing the Thai movie star pose, and that there are souvienir teaspoons on the wall.)
This is my dad and his brothers:
There's a good article in The Age about what Father Bob reckons Christmas is about.
Read the whole thing here."Do no harm and do a bit of good," is his plea for Christmas. How do you do that? "By treating others as a facsimile of yourself."
It's stripped-down New Testament material retooled to the language of a blogger, podcaster, TV star and veteran helper of the disadvantaged.
Good can be done at ground-level, he says, by us, without needing help by religious leaders. "It's got to be trickle-up. What worries me about religion and the way she has been merchandised is that you get the impression that everything is trickle-down." Basically, he says, do it yourself. "We better get down and dirty," he says. "If you really want to make a change in the world you have to put in."
Tonight after staff prayers (which was also Nate and Ali's de-comissioning) we had a party in the elevator.
