On Wednesday my brother Adam turned 21, so I went out to the community dinner that Adam and Justin and our parents are involved with at the Ferntree Gully Guides Hall.
This is Justin toasting Adam with a piece of birthday cake:
Last night I was at Justin's 18th. One of his friends said, 'Oh, it's Justin's brother! The one and only!' and shook my hand and told his girlfriend, 'He's known as Justin the First!' I had a Twisties sandwich. There was much talk of Clockface.
We have new resis moving in this weekend. Andy started moving up from Geelong yesterday, and Gemma is getting here from Sydney late tonight. Tomorrow the seven of us are going down to Aireys Inlet for resi retreat, and on Wednesday the rest of the staff will be coming down for staff retreat, so we can talk about many Big Fat Important Things.
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.)
This week is Mission Exposure Week, so we've got five people staying with us to find out a bit about what we do at Urban Seed, and about some of the thinking behind what we do.
Tonight they got to be part of our community dinner. Ray made a cake for Marcus, in the shape of Albert the magic pudding, because it was his birthday yesterday.
Marcus likes The Magic Pudding because he reckons it's like the kingdom (or economy) of God, because even though it keeps getting eaten it never runs out, and it doesn't like not being eaten. Pudding thieves often try to steal it, to control it, but it will always run away, because it wants everyone to eat it.
After almost everyone had left we played some short-lived nerdgames (roleplaying games, like Dungeons and Dragons) based on Mark's Gospel and the G20.
