Before I go and indulge myself in some Pride and Prejudice – because I feel like it, and before I start entertaining any thoughts of taking a blogging break to get all my uni assignments done, I might as well say something about today as it was full of interesting moments.

My wake up call was Dad yelling at me to do the dishes, which I slightly stupidly left last night. Not the worlds most pleasant way to get up but I took it slow and managed to grab another 20 minutes of snoozing. By that time I was in a thoroughly decent mood, had some breakfast, put the new CD on (Youth Alive one that Jas endowed me with). I’m really not one for live music as it always comes with copious amounts of cheering which sets my teeth on edge – however if you disable the few disaster tracks, 90% of the CD is really not bad. I am more impressed with WA Youth Alive music than I thought I’d be, couldn’t stand it all the time, but a dose now and then is fine and was quite enjoyed. So I did the dishes slowly as I was in a lesiurely thinking, listening mood. Why can’t doing the dishes always be such a pleasant experience!

I ended up driving to work after intending to get the train as I got distracted and basically ran out of time to make it. Petrol is so horribly expensive.

Dave came into work about 20 minutes after I’d started and drifted nearby and we talked for quite a while, as much as I dared anyway. Needless to say, my manager wasn’t around or I wouldn’t have hardly acknowledged him. There is absoultely no problem that I can see if I can still do my work. I was made to multitask. Dusting shelves and checking orders and giving the occasional customer help is not worthy of high concentration.

I was helping a guy looking for a book on the Commonwealth Games, we didn’t have any, so I suggested a place on Swanston St. I think he was slightly not quite all there and he followed me when I came out of the registars area and started telling me he was going to the footy but not into that part of the city etc. I really don’t like it when my personal space is invaded, he was far too close and it took a bit of moving and some go-nowhere responses for him to get the picture. We get a few strange people in the shop. Mr. I’ll wait until the very last minute to leave was there again as Susan and I were closing, he’s creepy.

I’d been helping a lady (teacher) in looking for a very particular lot of books – something about a fussy Yr.8 reader who needed factual (but not too factual), action, modern, strong language (a bonus), not too small text, not too large a book, not too dumbed down… and on and on went the list of specifications. I was suggesting things as I came across them and doing a fair bit of guess work. You usually only spend about 5 minutes helping someone, occasionally you apprehend an exception. She was reasonably nice, but very direct. She ended up with about twelve books on the counter ‘choosing’. Simone stepped in for a moment as I had to help someone else and the woman was writing down the majority of the titles in a notebook. Simone pretty muched asked her what she was doing. She picked three and told Simone quite rudely to her face that she’d go and find all the others through some other place. You just don’t do that when you’ve basically used a lot of a staff member’s time (mine). I wasn’t too bothered about the time/difficulty of my interaction with her, but the other two were fairly indignant and I can see why. She did come up later and say thank you to me, that still doesn’t deride from the fact that what she did wasn’t exactly right.

Around 2:30pm we had chaos errupt in the form of conciding complications. The same woman paid through an account and while Simone was putting it through one computer entirely locked up (there are two for the registar). So both systems had to be rebooted, Susan bought out a batch of bags that were very faulty, not a huge drama, it pretty was busy… and we ran out of change. It did keep us on our toes. I got my break an hour later than I should have.

Half an hour break is a luxury sometimes. I went and found Dave where he was discounting coleslaw 😛 and talked for a bit then went off and got myself some Mrs. Fields coffee. Tried some of the chocolate we are giving anyone who spends over $40 over the Mothers Day period at Dymocks – Lindt Creme Caramel. Not bad, a bit rich.

Some males are inbuilt with the know-how of how to give compliments without appearing to be sleasy. I let some older guy know he was getting some chocolate and he said something about me not looking like I ate it, I confess I totally missed what he was getting at, then realised and smiled at him. He joked about if he spent over $80 that he’d get two and then grabbed another book to add to the 4 or so he was already getting. It made it over $80. I snuck in the extra block, but I think he saw me. I love cheerful people.

To top off the interesting customers. A lady tried to return three kids books, they can’t have totalled more than $45 because she needed the money back on her credit card. People can try to look desperate and serious but it does them no credit (hehe). If they are foolish enough to abuse their finances in that way, they shouldn’t own the piece of plastic in the first place. We don’t give refunds ever unless maybe it’s on the same day. Her’s was definitely not.
“Can I talk to the manager?”
“No she’s not here”
“When will the manager be here?”
“Monday”
“How late?”
“Probably until about 5:00pm”
“Can I have the number to the Dymocks head office?”
(I look at Susan)
“The head office has nothing to do with it, this is a franchise.”
She walked away dissatisfied and still clutching her books, but hey, what can you do?

There was a girl in the shop with her boyfriend and another guy and woah, if the majority of the world had personalities like hers it’d definitely be a better place. I like seeing people getting excited about buying books, I like it when they treat you as if you are doing them a service and you matter. She mentioned she’d met Zuhal the other day and how lovely she was and just genearally a smiling and pleasant person. Smart guy I say for picking her! The were all really hohum, lets use an old word, amiable it suits perfectly. Wonderful customers!

Susan and I did the close and in the last ten minutes she asked me if I was interested in potentially house sitting for a friend of a friend – she’s done it in the past but can’t do it this time. Sometime in May or June. The unit is in Nunawading and walking distance from the station. This is close to uni! 8 whole weeks, no rent! I’d be there to feed the cat and keep the place clean. I am sorely tempted, but have to get a few more details, see if it’s still available, work out how much it’ll cost me food wise and if I can live without internet access for that long 😛 How pathetic. If I can ring in someone else, that’d work too. Worth some thought and some more investigation. It’d be utterly glorious getting out of this house for a while.

Conclusio…. it’s gotten a bit late to indulge, but why not!

I enjoy reading articles from the Boundless Website, not saying I 100% endorse everything shared, but it’s generally one of the decent ways to point my mind in various directions at interesting and relevant topics. In the past I’ve refered to the following verse (and those like it) quite regularly particularly in regards to some of the relationship orientated stuff I’ve explored.

“Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything.” – 1 Cor 6:12

I don’t know if you have those ‘usefuls’ that you drag up over and over again? Context is a huge issue when reading the Bible and I hope that I usually deal with it and check and double check what I’m trying to glean. I definitely believe that the Holy Spirit can use God’s Word in whatever way to get through to us. I know that I’ve had several ‘out of context’ moments that I’ve actually needed at the time. I’m not recommending this as a regular practice and I far too often just randomly open my Bible and read what I hit first.

With the 1 Corinithians verse, this article on Boundless pointed out something that I was unaware of in it’s completeness.

“Please note that when Paul writes in First Corinthians, “All things are lawful (permissible) for me,” he is not establishing a divine mandate for a free-for-all of entertainment indulgence. He is, instead, quoting a false proverb then common among the Corinthians so that he might refute it.”

I do like the 1 Cor 6:12 version of the everything permissible as it seems to highlight Paul’s personal conviction, “I will not be mastered by anything”.

I am curious as to how much of, “Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial” is part of this false proverb and how it originated and I’m not exactly sure where to source it, I’d better find a commentary somewhere…. it appears as if the emphasis of the falsity is on the first half, which is exactly why context is important. Too many people do use verses like this to justify what they can do, they clip the ending and run with the first apparent truth they lay hold of.

It’s a bit shoddy of me to grab too much from the articles I’m using as what drama students might call stimulus, but this quote is definitely worthy of repeating.

“Whatever weakens your reason, whatever impairs the tenderness of your conscience, whatever obscures your sense of God, whatever increases the authority of your body over your mind, whatever takes away from your relish for spiritual things, that to you is sin, no matter how innocent it is in itself.” – Susanna Wesley

In the past I’ve explored a fair bit on self-control (and I’ll dredge up a link to an old post when I’ve got a bit more time). Susanna Wesley wrote this in response to her son John’s question of what sins he should avoid, which is a really peculiar thing to ask.

We are called to ‘flee from xyz’ and, ‘do not conform but be renewed’. We class sin as sin regardless, even though we tend in our human minds to weigh one worse than the other. This religion adheres and appears to delight in the ‘thou shalt not’ commands.

I’d like to think that in debunking the myth of ‘everything is permissible’ that we still grab hold of what it means to simply not, ‘thou shalt not’ but that we recognise why we do and should strive to steer clear of the both the non-beneficial things and the easily definiable sins.

As a Christian, I’d like to be living my life to the best that I can to glorify God. I shouldn’t be facing the wrong, maybe taste testing and then hitting it away because I ‘have to’, I should be looking the other way in the first place. I shouldn’t be living according to a code of rules but in response to the one who is greater than everything.

I don’t do a whole lot of entertaining, I don’t do a whole lot of cooking for that matter either, but tonight I did both!

Sam got down here around 5:30. We pottered around for a good while and I started making dinner as soon as Mum got home with the few things I needed. Burritos, nice and easy, Sam cut everything up and I did the meat etc. It’s a funny thing getting me in a kitchen sometimes, I’m probably a bit too, ‘whatever goes’ when it comes to food. However it worked… Sam’s desert 😛 well that’s another story (yeh hurt me later). Set the table and what not, then we bummed around my room for ages and estimated 6:30-7:00 for Jas and Paul to get here.

7:00 passed and I lay on my bed complaining now and then about being hungry while Sam took over my msn. Laura went ahead and ate. I decided if they weren’t here by 7:30 I’d go ahead and eat. They just made it.

Took a trip to Sky High (top of Mt Dandenong) to take a look at the lights. Dropped by Reinhards on the way up and managed to score another person to fill the car. Payed the $4 for not the worlds greatest view. Few too many lights up there and the sky was a bit smoggy. I decided Bourkes lookout was in order so we drove there after a slight detour and a glance and a half at the Melways.

It is entirely necessary in my opinion to take the shortcut (you have to walk a bit from the parking area) so I led the scramble down the hill in the dark, no torches and I was doing it from memory having been there once about three years ago. We sat and looked and talked for quite some time. The drifting smell of smoke coming from what I don’t want to know about wasn’t so pleasant but the drunk J (who I know of, from school) and his mates didn’t hang around too long. Unfortunately the best lookout on the mountain (known of) does tend to attract such and other behaviour.

A good evening. It was nice to opportunity to catch up with Jas again seeing as he’s on the other side of this very large island most of the time.

And now I’m exceptionally tired. One of these days I’ll blog about something more than just my day. What do you want to hear about?