hmmm - just been looking at a smile.co.uk card - might switch from my current coop account (even though they're the same bank).

fight club tonight - 7.30pm at 3 freedom road, BIG tv!!

and in response to matt p's picture, that would be gareth and lizzies old kitchen in crookes (and joy and clints before that). not sure on the event though...

apparently it is actually snowing or something right now in austin. this cannot be good.

bea's still ill, but no nose bleeds recently. well, not since tuesday.

i've just had quite an odd experience - i was down to do some practice exam scribing for someone so they know what sort of thing to expect when it comes to the actual exam and it was kinda left to me to explain the procedure, what'll happen. it was as if i was expected to use my experience of something to explain things to someone, as though i was part of the student services team - it was really wierd - is this proffesional responsability?! it feels strange.... not entirely bad but also quite scary too.... what if i got something wrong?...!

on a lighter note, we had an excellent night at abigails last night - bea thinks i should be an actor as i like getting into role at these sort of things. no chance of that. anyway, photos to follow soon enough. and some very good performances by people, although i'm not sure dan&jason have done their "hugsforsale" business much good.

just need to go and write my intro speech for fight club tomorrow .

bea's still ill, but no nose bleeds recently. well, not since tuesday.

i've just had quite an odd experience - i was down to do some practice exam scribing for someone so they know what sort of thing to expect when it comes to the actual exam and it was kinda left to me to explain the procedure, what'll happen. it was as if i was expected to use my experience of something to explain things to someone, as though i was part of the student services team - it was really wierd - is this proffesional responsability?! it feels strange.... not entirely bad but also quite scary too.... what if i got something wrong?...!

on a lighter note, we had an excellent night at abigails last night - bea thinks i should be an actor as i like getting into role at these sort of things. no chance of that. anyway, photos to follow soon enough. and some very good performances by people, although i'm not sure dan&jason have done their "hugsforsale" business much good.

just need to go and write my intro speech for fight club tomorrow .

beas still ill and i'm still having nosebleeds.

all the illness has lead to various films being watched by bea, as can be seen by the growing list down there on the right...

happy birthday abigail!!

being 24's alright.

well i'm finally back to some normal state of health (except the odd nose bleed), but now bea is in the same place i was (and rachel before that...). who will be next?!

kinda excited - i bought my first set of guitar strings in a couple of years today with the intention of putting them on today. really do need to get back into guitar again - lost a lot of excitement about it since recording the album. been slowly getting back into it since being in texas and surrounded by all the music out there. god bless CMT
!!

popped in to see andy mitchell at work but he wasnt in - still travelling back from aberdeen, so popped in and had a quick chat with rach at the showroom - quite nice to be in there when its quiet, unlike friday night.

anything else happening?...... not really

well - some good news - it seems robbie is coming to wabisabi/ austin next month. now this wont mean alot to most of you, but i'm sure exciting news for jen, abigail, pink cheeks and of course bea and i (not to mention anyone else in aid of a good massage....)

all good news indeed.

i hate to go on about it, but i'm getting really excited now...

anyway, a photo of robbie sitting in an inflated inner tube with a bottle of (i think) goose island ale in his hand:

i'm gonna be sooooo gutted if its not good weather when we go out.

well, it seems i may finally be getting better again - having spent another evening and night in bed and taking the whole day off work again. not that i minded today - fridays are pretty horrible.

anyway, to cheer my up this morning, my valentines day present arrived!

all the way from mexico (via london) comes a big bag of pozole (whole dried corn kernals), a bottle of chipotle chili ketchup, and a bag of "heaven facing chilies".

more available from the cool chili co:

a massive thank you to my lovely wife bea!!

still a bit ill, but cant cope with staying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, having unpleasantly wierd dreams anymore. mostly just got a headache and a cough now.

i am very dismayed that i have no emails in my hotmail inbox today! however, barnaby has replied to my work email and we are all very excited about him coming up this weekend - lots is going on - there's a wedding, the fat cat, philadelphia, late brunches and loads more!

we watched an amazing film last night - "life as a house" - i am going to request if i can present it for a friday night movie.

i am very dismayed that i have no emails in my hotmail inbox today! however, barnaby has replied to my work email and we are all very excited about him coming up this weekend - lots is going on - there's a wedding, the fat cat, philadelphia, late brunches and loads more!

we watched an amazing film last night - "life as a house" - i am going to request if i can present it for a friday night movie.

a little something for you to dwell upon this evening...

sorry, i have no idea why bea's put the royal mail over there on our links section. i doubt its so you can all send hate mail for wrecking our car....

i'd been thinking about the name philadelphia (as in the new church building and area) and being the failed latin student that i was, i only knew what half of the name meant - phil- as in love. so what was delphi? apart from being an old computer database language (i think) it was also a place in ancient greece that i remember from my far more successful classical studies days. so i thought i'd look up about it on the web and found some interesting stuff that can be looked up here .

but some of the highlights:

- delphi became very popular and well visited, being home to the famous oracle of the god apollo (sounding kinda similar top a fortune teller/ psychic). apollo also shared the space with (i think the goddess) dionysus

- before apollo took up residence there, it was home to either gaia (the earth goddess) or themis (another primordial goddess).

- the temple in delphi was plundered/ destroyed/ set on fire 6 times!

- delphi(s) is the greek word for dolphin, which itself comes from the greek word for womb (a dolphin being a mammal), and so delphi was also considered the centre of the world

- they held regular athletic events every 4 years

just thought it'd be interesting to find the historical background of the name philadelphia - i'm not sure how much we'd want to be wanting to read into it though, prophetically speaking that is - not sure mike will be getting much from it....

hmmm....

well well well... our wonderful friend stacy has started blogging and will be much appreciated by those people on thefridaynightmovie blog. here is a snippet of her first post to whet your appetite!

I dream of breaking through that seemingly impossible barrier between Christ in me and all that is around me ... wouldn't it be nice if all the world were a beach boys song. Wouldn't it be nice if I could hug the pain out of people. If I could I would squeeze so hard. Wouldn't it be nice if I could scrub the ugliness and selfishness off of myself, my friends, my society. I would scour and scratch till we bleed. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all break into song while waiting in line at H-E-B, I would be so light on my feet and a beautiful barritone boy would wisk me into his arms while we light up the aisles. Wouldn't it be nice if we could will away the pain and emptiness in our guts that keeps us up at night and alters our diets and plunges us toward deep deepening depressive dreams of grey hazy nights in a gloomy grimy city where the dogs are dipped in disposed of drinks and their eyes invite and threaten you all at once ... where televisions glow in all the alley windows and children lie in dirty beds ... where you can't remember who you are or if you are alive at all, but you watch as danger skids through in sedans. In that place you can strip nude and no one cares, you can be tall or short or fat and you can sleep around, no one seems to notice, you can travel in damp tunnels and store your things in broken mirrored medicine cabinets. But where are you then? Is it home? Is it a place to visit? I don't enjoy my visits there, whatever the case, I awake and wonder why no one noticed the dirt and danger, why didn't anyone notice me?

when andy talks about thanking God for the stuff he's done even when the whole lot hasn't been done yet i really get him, like thanking for a partial healing and then praying in the rest. i get him at other times too before you go misquoting me! anyway - someone in america (i assume) has also got this piece of theology into their heads...

google

what cathers wrote about head and heart was something steve and i (and a few others including jen andrew) kinda got into over the weekend (albeit a little briefly). we're both very much head based, deciding things based on what our head said. there are times when i act on what i feel, and they often make me either feel crap (when it was something i knew i shouldn't've done) or when i really feel like Gods putting something on my heart that my head cant really ignore any longer. i guess my sense of what i know to be true is a lot more reliable for me to live by than what i feel to be true, so theres a tendancy to stick to what i know. but then talking to someone like jen, and you see the opposite of steve and i, someone who makes all their decisions based on her feelings - and thats not something negative for her, in that i'm not saying she just does what she feels like doing, but in that God speaks to her through her feelings.

what am i saying....?

i guess God can talk to you either way, and most ideally both ways - it would be a lot easier if he just did it one way, not i know i'm missing out on a lot if i just do what i know. for example, 100% head leaves little room for faith in God to provide, heal, forgive, and especially love - do i know God loves me? well yeah, in my head i know it, but do i really KNOW it in my heart? not really. there needs to be a connection made somewhere.

something both steve and i said, its very hard to operate out of a feelings place as its somewhere we've never gone before and so are completely inexperienced in and dont trust.
something laurence said a little while ago about the phrase "love is a choice" - he said, "God didnt send his Son to die for us because of his ability to make good decisions". which is something matt touched on i think.

hi everyone. what a great weekend! andy and i were in edale for the YAC leader's weekend and this was fab. i cried a lot when i realised that i still feel like a real misfit but the prayers spoken over us were amazing - totally confirmed everything that God had said to us via our commited community last Sunday. Naomi Hill also prayed some stuff over me that sounded as though it was straight out of the mouth of God - it was really healing. Trefor Jones also got my relationship with the established church down to a tee so all in all, despite my utter inability to engage with certain types of corporate worship, i was very blessed and hopefully i've blessed others.

the car quote has come through for our little accident on thursday evening and it is a little more than all those involved expected. the guy who was involved is called ed and it would be a good idea if you could all pray for him and his finances and all that as he would prefer not to go through insurance. he has a very lovely audi.

mike spoke last night about money and vision and it was so releasing, followed by drinks at the florist on walkly lane (i think) which was so exciting - in terms of activity in walkley and the kingdom coming down the hill from crookes. mike suggested that Christian shouldn't use the word 'afford' cos that suggests that you're the one in control of your money, and anyway, it's not your money at the end of the day is it?!

God is really doing fantastic things in marriage and adny and i feel really united at the moment and it's like we're moving into this phase where we're being pulled together after feeling held apart for ages. keep praying for us in this cos marriage is still really hard and i don't want to see the ground that's been taken being snatched away again.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! lots of love from ?!

i said HOT DAMN!!

just in case some of you wondered came over me. i'd actually heard it was something to do with an american root beer, but nevermind...

its friday - the weekend is here - lots of time for chilling out, seeing friends, doing nothing. errrr.... oh dear.

no, it should be good.

wish i was at jens sunday lunch though.

gutted.

hot damn!! (said in a texan accent) we're goin' a texas!!! which means tubing tubing tubing!! with lots of sheffielders too - i sooooo cant wait!

which also means lots more photos to go on our website.

which funnily enough reminds me - new photo album up and running.

and here are some photos:

see - not that long to get it going...

PRAISE GOD!!!!!!!!

we are now at the top of the floggie bloggie list on matt parkin's site!

ha ha ha - world domination will be mine...

ok - enevelope stuffing is making my mind go all numb! amazing testimony - God has provided all the money needed to cover the cost of our tickets to usa. this is so incredible that i am almost (!) speechless. the americans have really learnt this thing of giving God's money away so that your hands are open to receive. praise God cos his love endures forever and ever.

joy marriot has an interview for a general medicine job at 4pm today. please pray for her!

back to the envelopes now...

just looking round some others blogs - it seems we're all short on money and asking God to provide loads of it, and all at the time Mikes been teaching on faith, and now money and giving. coincidence?

hello matt - how's your day going? all this pressure to flog is causing a drop in quality and creativity but at least you are happy.

i just saw mr weir here at shu and he was looking very well. i think we should all pray for the weirs right now as they are so little and lovely and they are in the first few months of marriage and from where i stand it can be a very scary place!

i see in the news that headlines are being grabbed by threats of english suicide bombers and we are being warned not to go into financial or governmental buildings, which is peculiar seeing as often, suicide bombs are in cafes or buses or normal shops hmmmm...

today is a cool but weird day. God is using the bizarrest of things to crate and establish unity between me and andy and we managed to chat about some marriage stuff today without any level of escalation or fear or upset! i'm at work and today i mixing notetaking with stuffing envelopes - weirdly meditative! i received a great email from mike breen today which is a real encouragement and i feel really uplifted by those i lead which is great and exciting. i said to jen last night about how it really felt like when any of us from SOFA are together there is a real shift in the spiritual climate - bring it onnnnnnnnn!

personal mention here to matt parkins who is desperate for a flogging between 12 and 4pm - help him out some of you!

i hope this doesn't offend anyone, but the following joke is hilarious!! even dan and jason thought it was quite something! thank you to cathers for sending it to me.

Ethel is a bit of a demon in her wheelchair, and loves to charge around
the nursing home, taking corners on one wheel and getting up to maximum
speed on the long corridors. Because she and her fellow residents are all
one sandwich short of a picnic, they all tolerate each other, and some of
the men actually join in.
One day, Ethel was speeding up one corridor when a door opened and Mad
Mike stepped out of his room with his arm outstretched, "STOP! He said in a
firm voice:
"Have you got a license for that thing?". Ethel fished around in her
handbag and pulled out a Kit Kat wrapper and held it up to him.

"OK" he said, and away Ethel sped down the hall.
As she took the corner near the TV lounge on one wheel, Weird William
popped out in front of her and shouted, "STOP!", Have you got proof of
insurance?"
Ethel dug into her handbag, pulled out a beer coaster and held it up to
him. William nodded and said, "Carry on, ma'am."
As Ethel neared the final corridor before the front door, Bonkers Brian
stepped out in front of her, stark naked, holding a very sizeable (for
his
age) erection in his hand. "Oh, no!" said Ethel, "Not that darn
breathalyser again!"

so, i have been doing some crazy surfing and i have found the loch ness monster - for real. well, actually what i've found is the loch ness webcam which is on all the time. caroline and i weren't impressed at first until we realised we couldn't see anything because it was night time!! i am a little wary of letting you go to this site cos the guy who runs it is a white witch but maybe you could use your nessie spotting time as a time to pray! see ya'll later...

by the way - discipline brings freedom - ha ha!

as promised, lots more photos have gone up on the photo album. as always, a few (clickable) photos to whet the appetite:

cathers' birthday:

new years eve dinner party:

new years day champagne breakfast:

enjoy!

oh yes - seeing as it takes ages to go down the page to get to the next page, and i've got no way of adding in any other form of navigation (it being a lycos hosted site), i'm gonna set up a new photo album for the new year, so its all more managable.

and cause its a new year.

ok - latest update on the flights to america. well, we're still waiting for God to bring the money in - we've kinda said till the end of tomorrow, but we actually need the money in our accounts so we can actually buy them (ie we cant buy them in faith that God will replace the money - we just dont have it in our account). having said that, there have been promising sounding things from the other side of the atlantic... bring it in God!

and on a slightly different note... tonight's the night.... (mysterious tension mounting)

just been to the super market to buy food for tonight and tomorrow (when crazy man hodgson is joining us).

flip - this is some boring stuff i talk about on the blog.

oh yes - last nights film night - the thin red line - i'd seen it a few times before but after dans introduction i saw it a whole new light - totally amazing. also kinda scary watching it a week or so before WW3 might start! more on that later...

and something else i'd been meaning to put up, after last mondays teaching on rhythms of life etc, i'd been thinking about some stuff mike had mentioned - just before then, i'd heard it said that mike was bringing back all the young adults cause he felt there was too much diversity going on at the expense of unity. and then i was like, "too much diversity?! this is nothing - we're barely any more diverse then we were 3 years ago - we've got a long way to go yet!" and then thinking that if diversity and unity are on a continuum like work and rest are, or discipline and freedom (in that you cant have one without the other), then we need to have a unity step so that we can grow further in the diversity step next time. that we cant just go diverse, diverse, diverse, diverse etc until we're nice and varied and still hope to have any unity left in us, but that as we take a step towards unity, then we are then able to make an even bigger step towards diversity again, then a swing towards unity, then diversity and so on, each time growing more so.

pretty much like being on a park swing in other words - you dont just go straight up - you need to swing back and forth, gradually swinging higher and further each time. same idea.

hi all - we had a great brunch this morning - lots of people came - mostly from SOFA but others as well. we also got a letter through this morning invoicing us for some flights to texas. this is weird cos we didn't actually book any. however, we do feel like we're meant to be in texas in march and shannon helped us raise the faith to pray in the money. it's not just the flight money or to keep us going when we're out there - it's also the money to cover mortgage back in england as we wouldn't be paid for work for the time we're in usa. please pray for this - we have set a date of tuesday for God to get the money to us (about £1000 or $1500). he can do it!!!!!!

also, check out the rose princess aka cathers at her new blog!! the community is growing!

oh my word - i've just sat thru a long lecture on modernist, post-modernist (and deconstruction) architecture - huge respect to abigail and rob for not so much being able to understand bits of it but to actually do a whole year of it!!! flippin heck!

just to say that there are loads of new photos up on our photo album :

we have ones from our christmas cluster party, ones from our time in cheltenham (although more to follow), and some more added to our time in texas.

in fact, here are some snapshots from these: (click on the pic to go there)

ps - these are not up to date completely though - you'll have to wait a little longer for that, but i am on it.

coming soon: christmas at fawley, cathers birthday, new years eve and others...

In case you were wondering, of the 645 people employed by the royal household, only 1 person is not white who works in Buckingham Palace. Thank you to Lee who pointed out that white shin isn't actually white and so the question could be mildly misleading but at least now you know the answer.

hee hee hee hee hee hee!!! thanks nathan for that one!!!

amy writes, about church, "I wanted to be something outside it, then I was in it wanting to be something authentic in it. And now... I just want to be." this is amazing - so simple but so profound. really where i'm at. praise God for those who can say a few simple words which just wrap up the world!

good news and bad news (that does also have some good news attatched):

good: i found my lovely snowboarding mittens i thought i'd lost

bad: i didnt get the job as a miniature painter at games workshop

(the attatched good news: they were however quite positive about different kinds of freelance work i could do with them)

i spoke to shannon last night which was fabulous. i also managed to share a couple of words with jessica and then with shelly while her kids watched the president on tv while he was at the memorial service for the columbia shuttle.

we need to pray for the americans because shannon was saying that there is noone she knows who doesn't directly know someone who has been called up for the war.

a ha! i am worth: $2,068,770.00. who'd a thought it.
i mended the link before so it should work now if you tried it and it didnt work.

anyway, i'm off now in case my student turns up late...

sorry for itty bitty posts but i have just noticed that saddam is 'optomistic' about avoiding war which should spark some interesting reactions.

for those of you who don't log in regularly to thethingaboutit blog i am inviting everyone round for brunch at our house on saturday at 11am. please bring food as i have no idea how many people will come and it sounds like it could get expensive. bacon, eggs, bread, baps, croissants, milk etc.

in case you were wondering, I am worth exactly: $1,784,042.00. I'm off to look at who the most expensive person out there is. try this link to have a look yourself.

just to wet your appetite, go and have a look at the human for sale site where you can find out how much you are worth, buy another human, etc etc. you have to lie a little cos it only caters for americans so i put that i was a texan cos i am an honourary texan after all!

another day of doing very liitle work - only done 2 hours today - an improvement on yesterdays i guess.... the good news of the day, is that i only found out today (after working here over 3 1/2 years) that we get sick pay, ie if you're ill, as my wife is today, you still get paid for the hours you're booked for. so pretty much like normal sick pay then...

not much else happening though.


tried updating the photo gallery and was doing well, then just before it got published, this network message kept on coming up saying that i could do it anymore or something else i didnt understand. flippin' annoying!!

hello. i am poorly today and am at home. i have been in bed all morning - sleeping and reading. my voice was awful this morning but is getting a bit better but my ears feel a bit blocked and pop occasionally. thought i would quickly pop on to see how everyone is doing - as an extrovert, it is hard to be alone for long periods of time!

how was your weekend? as you will see, if you're interested, that ant won the blogging war. i was very disappointed not to be mentioned for my maturity in the way i gracefully and humbly stepped back from the frontline but alas, it was not to be.

we had such a busy weekend and managed to eat all our meals at other people's houses! this week i will have my first proper delivery of organic veg which is very exciting - lots of fresh and seasonal veg.

although today has been very intense so far, i did really enjoy a 2 hour seminar that i was in. the students had to do a little test and i am going to put a couple of the questions up for you:

1. A child was run over in the street. His father went with him to the hospital in the ambulance. He was rushed to the operating theatre but once there, the surgeon looked down and said

I cannot operate on this child - he is my son."

Explain

2. 645 people are employed in the Royal Household. How many people with a skin colour other than white work in Buckingham Palace?

by 2pm today i had drunk a litre and a half of water - this is quite astounding because by the time i leave for home at the end of the day i will have drunk a further 0.75litre of water and then tonight i expect i will drink further water which means i may actually break my own record of the largest amount of water to drink in a day without excessive heat conditions or partaking in exercise.

last night i slept really well...

and just read mat p's blog which mentioned something lee collier had written about when to stop doing something Gods told you to do. - really made me think, as i know i don't feel like someone who sticks at things, and gives up on things all too easy.

on the otherhand, i know completely what he meant about the phrase, "Gods grace isnt in it anymore", which i often feel is one of the biggest cop out excuses that can be given, and something that i know a friend of ours whos now left sheffield found very frustrating with certain "ministaries" etc. i mean, its hardly as if God got to the end of the line and says, "sorry guys, i cant fund/ deal with this anymore - i'm finding it too draining".

anyway. rant over.

i've just been looking through our online photo album, and cant believe how cool some of the parties and people were and are (respectively) - seeing all you lot in all the photos - i love you lot loads!!