It smells good outside. New cut grass, cool air.

Yesterday evening I met a bunch of the yits people at Eastland for dinner (in the food court of all places). I walked in (after getting a lift with Jess and Sam) and went to check my roster at Dymocks – yes I was working 9-3pm. An utter pain, considering the plan was late night movies.

Kat and Dave attacked us (well Kat did) while I was checking – being hugged across the barrier of ‘behind the desk’ was interesting ha, Kat has no social qualms whatsoever.

Wandered our way down to wait for who ever else decided to show: Darryn, Elyce, Iain, Alecia, Sara, Kat, Dave, Sam, Jess W and myself made it for dinner. Clacy and Jess H joined us later at Jess’s place.

Kat fell off her chair after she was convinced people across the other side of the room were watching us, if they weren’t then, they did now.

We all made it to Jess’s after an expidition into BiLo. Watched Episode 1 (the pilot) of Alias to have something ‘suitable’ for the guys rather than French films. Not bad, not hugely enthralling.

A couple of them headed off, and we got Dave, Iain and Darryn sitting through most of Love Me If You Dare (french film). Elle was entirely put off by the ending. Kat declared it a good movie. Darryn left 3/4 through as he couldn’t stand any more. I love it and have already seen it, but this was the first time in colour (yeh, stupid tv’s). Sam was pleased to have put together the fragments she’s been shown – or was that the next movie? Iain was shocked at having sat through a whole subtitled movie.

Said goodnight and goodbye to all except Alecia, Kat, and Sam (and Jess because it was her house). We set up beds, and watched ‘A Very Long Engagement’. I was half asleep through most of it, picked up stacks more than the first time and had to explain stuff to Kat every 20 minutes or so. Not a good movie for late at night. Complicated plot and sufficently gory, but quite excellent nevertheless.

Sam and I talked for a bit, (and if you have her blog you can read that, if you don’t , poor you). I suddenly noticed a set of knots in the wooden roof that looked like this funny dog’s face and started laughing, even harder when after I mentioned it, Sam saw it straight away. So we got the giggles (oh how I hate that word) for a while. Then I decided I’d better sleep.

What a boring saga of an evening.

Mind you today I did something new.

Work. Around 1pm I go for my lunch break. The food court is massively full and I didn’t fee like wandering ages to find another seat. Finally found one. Ten minutes later a woman comes up to me, “Do you mind if I sit here.”. Knew the difficulty, so I said, “Yep that’s fine”. Anyway, I had my tent of a Dymocks shirt on, and I ask her if she’s Christmas shopping (merely to be polite, because of course the answer would be yes), then we talk about books for a bit. Eventually I introduce myself and she herself. Christine (middle aged – late 40’s). Got talking somehow ended up that I grew up overseas, now in M. She says, “Oh I run for (erm.. labour?) for that area”. And then conversation drifts onto church (she was not a Christian no, but did know a bit about Vineyard and stuff re: soup kitchen etc…). Anyway. it was cool. Talking to a complete stranger. It made my day thoroughly interesting.

She came into Dymocks later and bought something, said hello/goodbye to me again. I apparently should be seeing her face on promo things for this area. Interesting. Bizarre. I should like to do it more often. Ha.

Saw, Geoff S (old pastor), Anton (Janice’s dad) and the one and only Rowan Lewis (YITS) all today. Quite a mass of people out shopping. The place was crazy.

Bus home, air con is not working, it’s really warm. I get a msg from Paul re: someone at his work. Entirely amusing. Listen to music and continue on getting my Tolkein fix for the year (halfway through the Hobbit – my Christmas tradition).

And that was my day.

Oh, and Wendy Rayner is here to spend Christmas with us, we are pretty much her (almost) family. It’s nice to see her again.

be mad, be very mad at bec making you read boring accounts of what she’s done. Thats all for now.

I get the distinct impression sometimes that I vastly underestimate people.

Occasionally one of my far less blog obsessed friends draws the nerve to relax themselves enough to allow others to reach in a little further. They choose to show more, or I just simply see more. Sometimes in conversation, but having the words picked carefully and out there so you can actually see them mmm…

We are multifaceted. People surprise me. I do not give them all the credit they deserve. It’s sometimes as if I get so caught in my own world that I forget there are 3 billion other people in the world, that aren’t just people, but people who are living their own lives and facing their own walls.

What makes people like they are?

Jess you wrote about weakness, showing it. Weakness, in the forms you mentioned (and plenty more I think that got missed – or don’t apply so much to you) are so much a part me, and of everyone. You can change all you like. But you know exactly what strikes that nerve. You can teach yourself (and learn) to think first, but a small part of you almost never fails to succumb.

But what of proclaiming weakness? Do we talk about it, admit to it only because it feeds off another part of our insecurity? Fulfills some great (or small) accomplishment in us. That we could, that we can. I think we (and I) do get lost in this maze of where developing character crosses into where our initial reasons are diluted so far down that the initial reason is thwarted.

It is easy to get lost in trying badly to make someone understand us.

I find it quite strange that I came on here originally intending to talk about my frustration of waking up to the noise of a hairdryer and, “Where’s my eyeliner?” to which I made pathetic groanings (or cat noises – katie :P) when I found the clock didn’t even say 9:00am. And now this.

Humanity is beautiful and terrible.

Something short as I’ve left things a bit late for long ramblings and pryings into the depth of my mind.

quote of the day (thanks to some random guy in dymocks) “I don’t read you retard!”. I had a quiet laugh. (nb’s to self that a couple of you might not even get it).

Ha. I have gone blank. Well how’s this for informative, wise, sharp and witty? pfft and I need way more sleep than I’ve been getting. Do you think holidays even exists for me any more? I could do with a week of pure sleep and going away with a few choice friends, or maybe even better just by myself and do something entirely relaxing.

or I’ll just keep on dreaming, if I end up in bed.

God gave me a bird today. It’s been a while. Promises last. He hasn’t forgotten and I still remember when I suddenly find one in a strange place when I really need to know and be reminded.

I saw Garden State (movie) last night and have fallen in love with it’s strangeness and depth. It was 3:00am by the time it was done and we put the lights out. I lay there (the one of the 5 of us most needing sleep) staring at the ceiling and thinking for a long time.

Realness. The ability to feel not just joy but pain in order to experience the former in it’s fullest. Reality. How much of life do we miss because we refuse to live it?

I want to remind a few of you of this, what made it into my first blog post.

“Whoever you are, this is but a little of who I am”

Online is no reality. I can withold or share as much as I like. I can continue on doing what I often catch myself doing – reverting to building up persona’s, letting others catch on to an idea when it in its fullest is not a true reflection of me and starts to stretch bars up around me until I am limited to that persona.

I often wonder why some of my msn or other conversations between different people are so incredibally different. Some people draw out this appologetic frustratingly less confident me by simply responding they way they do – they don’t mean it, I don’t mean it and look on in surprise at how I am. I wonder how much of something draws back to the very first time you communicate with someone, how much is just due to who they are, their age, their sex, their own willingness to be open.

I am amazed at how much people think they know of me (or I think, they think) when all they have is a blog, or some text on a computer screen.

“Dealing with stuff is both important
and healthy… and I’m not foolish enough to discount text-based
communication in that. God uses us here on the net. There’s no question
about that.

I think somewhere though, there exists an imaginary line, where one of the
parties needs to be quite hard-line about things… perhaps committing the
cardinal sin in the online context: shutting down a discussion. “

Communication and reality.

Something I’ve never been able to work out is how much do you share, where do you stop. There is transparent living and there is oversharing. There is friendship and there are boundries.

“Above all else, guard your heart,
for it is the wellspring of life.”
– Proverbs 4:23

How important it is to be real.

“No man understands a woman, no woman understands a woman, no-one understands a woman.” – (Tully from A Good Woman {movie})

The same applies to anyone.

No human understands a human completely, not even I think ourselves.

You are the author of knowledge
You can redeem what’s been done
You hold the present and all that’s to come
Until your everlasting kingdom

Lord, I don’t know where all this is going
Or how it all works out
Lead me to peace that is past understanding
A peace beyond all doubt

You are the God of tomorrow
Turning the darkness to dawn
Lifting the hopeless with hope to go on
You are the rock of all salvation

Lord, I don’t know where all this is going
Or how it all works out
Lead me to peace that is past understanding
A peace beyond all doubt

Oh, Lord, you are the author
Redeeming what’s been done
You hold us in the present
And all that is to come

Lord, we don’t know where all this is going
Or how it all works out
Lead us to peace that is past understanding
A peace beyond all doubt