I am NOT SWISS and I DON'T SOUND SWISS either!

played in church again yesterday. in spite of the fact that i've been down as playing on that date for about a month, i finally got the names of the songs on wednesday after a spate of emails going 'are you available to play the piano?'... just the names of the songs mind, and for four of the nine the books the music's in. except we've only got one of the two books listed. so the person in charge says she'll send me the rest of the music. by post...

i get a large envelope on friday containing five songs, including one of the two i already had, and a note saying 'sorry, i haven't got the music for the other two.' and she couldn't have told me this by email on wednesday when she promised to send the music? or on thursday when she got ready to send the music, noticed there were some missing, wrote a note about it and posted it to me? a little time bomb to brighten up my friday...

and what about the third missing song that she's just decided not to mention at all?!

i start stomping around, swearing about how i'm never playing with these people again... how come nobody ever understands that I NEED THE EFFING MUSIC IN ADVANCE IT MAY BE A COMPLETELY ALIEN CONCEPT TO YOU BUT I LIKE TO EFFING PRACTICE AND IF I DON'T HAVE THE BLOODY MUSIC UNTIL FRIDAY NIGHT I END UP DOING MY WRISTS IN! and i loose the will to ever play the piano again except for my own enjoyment when nobody else is around...

anyway, i phone the pastor's wife ruth in a panic, assuming that since she's the one who chose the songs, she's probably got some kind of music for them. luckily she also happens to be my brother's girlfriend's mum. so i had the full set of music when i got up saturday morning (or midday, whatever). finally! of course the songs i got last were the hardest to play, how could it have been any other way...

ruth didn't have the music for the last missing song. eventually i managed to calm myself down (i was fine on the phone to ruth, maybe a little frazzled, but since the whole music debacle wasn't her fault there was no reason to be angry at her and i'm pretty sure i was perfectly polite) and had a look through some of the books and found the song. luckily ruth had sung it to me over the phone, so i knew it was the right one. thing is, people are running out of good song titles, so sometimes you find you've learnt the wrong 'holy, holy' (seriously, there are about three songs in ONE BOOK that have that title!)

i think i've lost my train of thought. where was i?

anyway, all the feedback said the music sounded great (except for one moron who told me the piano was too quiet and i should play louder. he got growled at for trying to be funny while i was trying not to unleash a stream of neverending music-playing-hating abuse into the general atmosphere...) which is good. but i just felt... awful, angry, frustrated, depressed, did i mention angry?

at band practice i managed to explain that i NEED THE FLIPPING MUSIC AT THE LATEST ON WEDNESDAY AND THAT'S ONLY CAUSE I CAN TELL YOU OBVIOUSLY CAN'T SURVIVE BY YOUR WITS ALONE ...oops the subject makes me angry and i've been reading dilbert books... i meant it's obviously too much to ask for a full week, so i'll compromise by allowing for wednesday (even when they promise a full week i get it on tuesday if i'm lucky). i managed to say it calmly and hopefully non-confrontationally. but i was too stressed over it to use the usual diplomatic 'it's my problem not yours, but could you please help me with it?' tactic. cause in this case i really don't see why it's too much to ask. how come i'm the only one practicing anyway?! to me, not to practice would be disrespectful. but i guess they don't see it that way.

anyway, i managed to tell them in a mostly positive way, so hopefully they'll remember and be aware of my need for timely provision of the music, for the time being...

since i'm playing again this sunday coming, but with a different group of people, i thought it might be best to give advance warning rather than turn round afterwards and say 'the music is late, i'm not playing!' cause none of them was in church yesterday i had to send an email. i hate sending emails about stuff like this. it's much harder to tell whether it's coming across properly or not. i hope they don't take it the wrong way...

urgh, life is difficult sometimes. especially when you have a temper like mine and are supposed to be all loving and christian... you know, during the 'worship' (that's what the singing-songs part of the service is called) the band members are meant to be chanelling the holy spirit so that the congregation will be touched, according to the band leaders. while this is a worthy thought, the only spirit i tend to chanel is definitely not holy... i have to count it as a success when i manage to restrain myself from thumping the keys angrily during mellow songs after some new screw up... (so far i've always succeeded, but it's been a close thing every time)

Labels: churchy stuff, life, music, rant, temper

where to start?

volleyball first. i've quit both teams, although with the one ('my other swiss volleyball team') it's not definite. i am planning to take a break from volleyball now. it's not really a happy thought, i've been playing it for fifteen years now, i can hardly imagine life without it :-S but for the last few months, being on that court has been a nightmare for me. i haven't actually enjoyed a single match. sure, there have been some cool points where i couldn't help but be pleased, but overall, the main feeling on court has been 'please let me off this damn court', with the added though of 'what underwear am i wearing, can i just quit, strip off the kit and leave with my head held high?' mostly the answer was 'yes, but are you sure you want to do that? apart from anything else it would be seriously burning your bridges...' i managed to hold it together (just) and quit more civilly after the season ended ;-)

so hurray, what a relief! :-D

and i might even have found a replacement: fistball :-)

spent the afternoon at michi's (guy from church) flat with some friends. most of the time the topic was the music in church and the good old days when andi m. ruled the band with an iron fist. at some point i mentioned that my thursday evenings are now free cause i quit both my volleyball teams (hurrah!). it seemed a bit random when michi said 'so you trained on wednesdays?' huh, how does he know and why should he care...

he plays fistball on wednesdays and is recruiting... it sounds like it could be fun. quite like volleyball in many ways, but different. and his team doesn't actually play in a league, it's just training and random tournaments sometimes. but they train hard anyway. hurray, definitely trying that! and i've already got the knee pads ;-)

so that was the good result of the afternoon.

the bad one. hmm...

i played the piano again in church this morning. on the whole it was fun. some minor screw-ups (which resulted in me having to force myself not to thump at the keys during some soft songs *g*, but mostly fun. and most people complemented us on how wonderful it sounded. lots of praise for my playing. i now believe i play well enough not to be an impostor up there ;-)

but there are some who like to criticise any imperfection, not matter how minuscule. each and every one of them is someone who themselves plays or has at one time played in church. my dad's one of them. to my great shame i'm one of these people too. however, i always manage to praise the musicians rather than criticise them, because i recognise that the problem has nothing to do with their musical ability and performance, i couldn't do it better. the problem lies in my need to take every pianist apart and convince myself that i probably would have done it better this time. it's because i'm jealous they're up there and i'm not. i'm ashamed of myself and trying to work on it... as we played today 'i'm sorry Lord for the thing i've made it, when it's all about You'...

seriously though it was a total criticism-fest! i'll admit i agreed with some of the stuff cause some stuff seriously bugs me and makes it impossible for me to play properly. but they were going on about how great it was when andi m. was in charge and the days when they had auditions for places in the band. yes, auditions! can you imagine? it's church ffs!!! if you can't let everyone have a whack at it in church, where else?!!! and apart from that, was that a dig at me?! after i've just started believing i'm good enough? screw you... he claims it wasn't aimed at me, and a male friend told me a while ago, when a guy says something that could be an insult or it could just be missing filter between mouth and brain, it's generally the latter. but i'm a girl. i'm not convinced...

there was good stuff and bad stuff. michi thinks you should have band practice every week, build up a repertoire of songs you can do pretty much perfectly and work from there. i think that's a great idea and would totally commit an evening a week to it, if we did something like that. thursday is good now that volleyball's out ;-)

but somehow i don't think it's likely to happen. and seriously, this barrage of criticism has kind of depressed me. right now i don't want to play at all anymore if
that's the reaction... how horribly annoying! next time i play i'll be obsessing over it, i can see it coming already :-( buggrit.

it wasn't even that close to perfect as they think when andi did it anyway! they're just remembering the good, not the bad...

and anyway, professional isn't that attractive. this is church, ffs! it's not supposed to be smooth and slick, it's supposed to be from the heart! man i hate this!

Labels: churchy stuff, fistball, guys, music, volleyball

the night before last i had a nightmare. i go to church sunday morning and get pressganged into playing the keyboard with no warning whatsoever and no opportunity to practice at all. looking through the music before the service starts, i see that the first two songs should be ok, they're songs i've played before, so i'll manage more or less ok. but the next two are songs i've never even heard before! short moment of freaking out before i decide that aince i've got the guitar chords and everyone else'll know the song, i can follow their lead with regard to timing and whatever and muddle through somehow.

but when the time actually comes, the person who chose the songs stands up on stage and says 'i heard these next two songs were really nice, so i thought we'd try singing them today :-)' meaning absolutely no one has a clue what they're supposed to sound like and i'm supposed to do an intro... after spending a few moments trying to calm down and just get on with it i work out that the person (it's my mum, but don't tell her, i edited this part when i told her about it) has done it on purpose, just to be nasty or something, not quite sure. i lose my temper, shove over the keyboard (mum's really good, really expensive keyboard) and leg it. the dream carries on, with me on the run all round zurich... *shudders*

yesterday morning (real life sunday morning), no, actually lunch time. we had lunch at church with everyone. after lunch for some reason we ended up on the subject of dreams. so of course i told them about the dream i'd had about church the night before. lili thought maybe i'd been thinking of joining the band and that that was why i'd dreamt it (i told them the edited version too). but i definitely hadn't, don't know why i dreamt such weird stuff.

but ten or fifteen minutes after i'd told them about the dream, the pastor comes up to me and says 'vicky your mum said i should ask you about playing next week, we're really short of people.' lili who's standing next to me just falls about laughing. how weird is that?!

so now i'm playing next sunday. how scary! it'd be scary anyway, the usual pianists are professionals and i'm nowhere near their level! but right after that nightmare... so bizarre, i never usually dream about playing in bethel. lili suggested it might have been a warning ;-) if so. i've ignored it. what's the worst thing that can happen in real life...

now i just have to decide whether to have the lid of the grand piano open or closed: if it's open i'm less visible behind it, but on the other hand it's louder, so they'll be able to hear my amateurish playing better... i think probably closed and play quietly ;-)

Labels: bizarre, churchy stuff, music

i am officially quitting puzzle games such as minesweeper, sudoku and all such games! they are stopping me coming closer to God and just generally ruining my life (the games are ruining my life, not stopping me from ruining it...). the last two weeks i've spent hours and hours (and more hours) playing them when i should have been reading up on division algorithms for my master thesis, and so i've been getting more and more stressed until now i can hardly get to sleep at night (so i do more puzzles). and by the time i can finally tear myself away from them i think to myself 'it's too late to spend hours reading the bible, i'll do that tomorrow' or 'i'll just read a random (short) psalm tonight'.

the sermon today was great. i think the church is being woken up, maybe we're in for a revival. scary, but cool. that stupid word. 'cool'. i say 'cool' for just about anything. last week i told andrea her testimony was 'cool'. then i had to go 'um, no, of course i didn't mean cool. i meant, um, good. um, you know, um, really, um, moving, right? oh, you know what i mean!'... so i should probably quit the stupid word 'cool' unless i actually mean coldish...

anyway, the sermon about what Jesus would say if you met him right now and asked (like the rich guy in lukes(?) gospel) 'what do i need to do to be guaranteed eternal life', meaning 'what's left in my life that's preventing me from growing in Christ?' chrigi challenged us all to make a decision today to get rid of whatever it is in our lives. for some people it's obvious what it is, for others it's a subject they daren't think about, others (like me) can't tell.

i've got so many things that need fixing... volleyball (although currently it's not something more important than Jesus, it's actually something i'd rather quit, but i've committed myself to playing in both teams), food (but i'm always worried i'd be doing that for the wrong reasons (loosing weight) (and i don't mean quitting food altogether OF COURSE!!!), books (i've managed to quit romance novels, took over 200!! books to the second hand shop a couple of months ago), cds, general material posessions... and probably many others i can't think of right now... so it was quite a difficult choice, but i decided on the puzzle games and i've deleted the links from my blog to reduce temptation. although not the ones i posted specially, there's no point, i know the URLs off by heart (in fact i caught my fingers typing one automatically the moment i opened the browser...).

right, got to go, off to ICF (international christian fellowship), hope it's good this time, i've only been twice and both times it was crap (oops, should also swear less. no, should stop swearing)

Labels: churchy stuff

hurray, i've found a church group to join! on saturday we had a barbeque by the lake for all the twenty to thirty year olds (christine wanted to know how old tim is, cause he's still frantically trying to deny being twenty. poor tim, his girlfriend's nearly sixteen *g*)

so anyway, i finally managed to ask how one goes about joining a 'life group' (small group of people who meet once a week or every two weeks to talk about their lives and discuss things and stuff). i went along to one of the groups they suggested last night, and i was welcomed with open arms, they were really lovely! so i've joined them. as usual the whole experience was a lot easier than i dared hope, i'm such a wimp!

got my first proper driving lesson (with a proper instructor and all!!! *g*) tomorrow! really looking forward to it. and of course i'm also dreading it... ah well ;-)

Labels: churchy stuff, driving

i've just gone through my posts to see how many old drafts i haven't finished and there are quite a few of them. never finished the full sized version of the office christmas party, christmas and new year never got done, there's a long list of notes from about two weeks ago, i think that was quite a full week, and i was away in cardiff last week... and of course i didn't even complete the sunday night in dublin (dia bashed her leg, nearly broke it, remember...) let alone monday (jameson distillery...). haven't even got a draft for that though.

so anyway, i'm going to start with the most recent stuff and then... no actually i'll probably just write down whatever comes to mind (as usual, why am i bothering to write this, it's not as though there's ever much of a structure to my ramblings...)

now my mind's blank... (yes, more so than usual...)

going back chronologically...

had my second to last (9th) guitar lesson with charlie tonight. cause i'd been in cardiff most of last week i hadn't really practised much, but he was still pleased with me. i finally decided to call him on the whole 'you're so talented, the rest of my students are quite rubbish' thing, but he insists it true, that he's not just saying it cause it's a good way to motivate me. still don't believe him though ;-) he's not happy that i'm going back to switzerland, he'll lose his excuse for not helping put the kids to bed on monday nights :-)

was just leaving the house this morning when i heard the bed making odd squeaking noises in the boys' bedroom (no, this is not going to be rude!). went in to find they'd put the ladder from josh's new bed across between the two beds and josh was climbing up it almost two metres off the floor and caleb had done his trick of positioning a plastic box underneath so in case someone did fall off they'd be sure to get sliced to ribbons on the shards when it shattered (he did that to himself about a month ago, i obviously didn't write about it. his back looked awful, he nearly had to go to casualty (i think if his mum weren't a doctor he might have gone)). usually i leave them to whatever mischief they're up to when they're meant to be getting ready for school, after all marion and dave managed to cope before i arrived, they don't need me butting in just cause i'm here (what i'm saying is i'm not very diplomatic, so the kids are more likely to go berserk than calm down if i try to interfere...). but this did seem slightly dangerous (PG to my way of thinking: a parent should be made aware of it so they can decide whether or not it is in fact too dangerous (cause sometimes i seem to overreact to things, or at least marion doesn't think they're as dangerous as i do)). i went and tattled... dave's reaction did seem to say that he thought it looked quite dangerous as well (my way of saying they got yelled at). so i was quite glad that tom seemed to have forgotten all about it when we got picked up from our various activities tonight :-) telling tales tends not to help things, but sometimes you just have to...

sunday next. nothing much happened. church was good. trixie puked on my clean jacket. her teeth are quite sharp and she really enjoys using them. left big dents in my thumb ;-) the twins are incredibly fast now! kept trying to retrieve them and bring them back to ulrika but she didn't seem bothered so i gave up. then i went off to look for the polyp and trixie got there first. i had to pick her up cause she was blocking the doorway and causing a traffic jam (there are a lot of people at that church). so i brought her back to ulrika at which point she puked all down my arm...

gotta go, just spent ages chatting to my brother on msn and now marion's back from her prayer meeting so we can watch battlestar :-D for some reason tim suddenly seems to think he's the most sane member of the family (although it should probably be least insane). ah well, if it helps him to thnk that. although it's a difficult call... hmm, i wonder who it is. maybe we should have a vote on it when i get back

Labels: churchy stuff, kids - arrgghh

i'm bored! can't practise the guitar cause dave is listening to jack johnson (i think) and i don't want to spoil it. except now the songs are repeating :-( when is marion coming home so we can watch an episode of bones?! i need to get off the computer before i go shopping again...

ooh, just remembered: haven't done my homework for the alpha follow on tomorrow night yet. i can do that :-) wonder how much it is... i think it's reading John 3 to 5 or 6 or so, except i didn't read 1 and 2 last week... (well, we were meant to do the whole lot last week, but we didn't get any further than the beginning of chapter 3 with the discussion so everyone who hadn't read it got another week to catch up, but of course i haven't...)

oops, dave says we're meant to read up to chapter 10... ah well ;-)

Labels: churchy stuff

no, i don't mean actual wine, i don't really like wine and after my run-in with wine in dublin i don't want to learn to like it...

i mean the new wine festival! hurray! marion's just booked it for a whole load of people from church, 33 people and quite a few have already booked separately and some haven't quite made up their minds yet. so it's going to be a huge group! with loads of kids eeek!

it's going to be such fun though! so i'll be back in the uk for a week at least next august :-D good thing we have to pay in advance, since i've got money at the moment, but knowing me i'll be completely broke next year. that reminds me, i should give marion enough money for the flights, just to make sure... ;-)

i would have liked to go to new wine this year but i was busy working myself to death in macdonald's so that my bank account wouldn't be in the red if i did by some strange series of events get a work placement in the uk (as it happened it was a good thing that i spent almost two months working full time and constantly smelling of chips and hamburgers...). plus, i didn't have the money to pay for it ;-)

just remembered: i've worked out what was going wrong with the comments. guess what was to blame... me, of course... what else would it be? i quite like the pink blog though. i just can't be bothered to go to the hassle of customising it so i'm going to try to go back to the old green layout. don't be surprised if it turns pink again at some point though :-D

Labels: churchy stuff, i'm special

have had a small go at f1x1ng (sorry, the 'eye' letter's not work1ng today, replac1ng 1t w1th '1's) the green vers1on of the template, but hasn't worked properly so far and 1 couldn't be bothered to spend all weekend f1x1ng 1t. so 1t's st1ll all p1nk... ah well

went to helen's last n1ght. jul1a was there w1th her lot. the k1ds all d1d loads of pa1nt1ng and then d1d a gallery of them. we were each allowed to have one for free, then we had to buy them (the proceeds went to char1ty). 1 kept p1ck1ng ones that emma had done, couldn't seem to help myself. 1n the end 1 found one of beth's 1 l1ked. after 1 thought 1'd done my duty and put my wallet back away (they were 20p each, 1 d1dn't m1nd the money, 1t was what to do w1th them, 1 can't bear to throw them away and 1 can't be bothered to f1nd somewhere for them), beth wh1spered to me 'can you buy one of james' he's try1ng to sell them' (james 1s 6) so 1 had another look. found a random one 1 qu1te l1ked, not a clue whose 1t was. so 1 asked, and 1t turned out to be james'. 1n my usual tactful manner 1 blurted out 'wow, 1 actually l1ke 1t!' ;-) 1n the end 1 completely forgot about them and left them at helen's. 1'd wrapped them up really carfully too, so they ddn't get ru1ned on the way home... ah well, solves the problem of what to do w1th them...

we got 'the lake house' to watch. jul1a alternated between not hav1ng a clue what was go1ng on and mak1ng w1ld guesses at the plot (ok, st1ll no clue about what was go1ng on...). 1t was 1mposs1ble to hear most of the d1alog cause everyone was talk1ng, 1 gave up and jo1ned 1n so helen sa1d accus1ngly at the end 'you were talk1ng as much as anyone else'. well otherw1se 1t would have been a complete n1ghtmare... and anyt1me someone k1ssed jul1a would make these shr1ek1ng 'ooooooooooh' no1ses. very juven1le ;-)

th1s morn1ng the serv1ce was a heal1ng service (oh, look the 's... oh no, 1t's not back...). 1 was a b1t worr1ed about 1t, cause 1t could have been qu1te awful, w1th people br1ng1ng s1ck fr1ends and relat1ves... but t1m (the pastor) 1s really good, people can really connect w1th h1m. and the stuff he's exper1enced 1s ... 1 wanted to say 1ncred1ble, but 1t's not, 1t's m1raculous and wonderful :-D so although 1'm not sure anyone got healed (they m1ght have though), 1t was st1ll a very good serv1ce and 1 do th1nk 1t helped the people who came

Labels: churchy stuff, i'm special

alpha was great last night. felt quite a lot better, the food was scrumptious and i didn't even come close to falling asleep even without the red bull, which i took back in t work this morning. maybe it was just sg...

i really liked the talk, it was on 'how do i pray' or something like that. and the discussion was very good too. alpha's great :-) i hadn't realised it was the last of the official 6 alphas (the church here split it up, so people only sign up for 6 of them to start with and then if they want there are the extra three afterwards). so when they handed out questionaires i declared that they shouldn't be handing them out till the last alpha evening... clever vicky! at being told that it was in fact the last of the first lot i went 'really? is it? is it? is it? is it?...' for ages till i gave up hope that anyone was going to bother to answer the group's moron. sometimes i can be extra specially odd ;-)

i think everyone in our group is planning to come back for the next three and the alpha away day which is the saturday after next. cool. i like our group :-)

i'm too tired to write my usual overly long post about every little thing that happened to me today. it is midnight (precisely according to marion's pc). so i will try to stick to the highlights.

finished documenting my work on the division pipeline. my next job is to analyse the power consumption of tc2.5 :-( i really dislike anything to do with power. i tend to be bad at it. paul n keeps saying (quite gleefully i think) 'it'll be a challenge' and 'you'll learn from this'. mike d told me (tongue in cheek) 'it's easy :-D' to which i just had to answer 'i'm not that gullible!!!'

but they're right, finally a real challenge, something i have to learn new skills for ;-) and so far i'm not working with sg, hurray!! *does a little happy dance*

volleyball was fun but very embarassing. we just played, cause the guys had a match so we didn't have much time, and we needed to practice the positions (probably completely the wrong word...) for the match a week on sunday. i was constantly in the wrong place, cause they do it diffferently from what i'm used to... ah well. i could have played worse ;-)

afterwards the guys won their match 3:0, although after the first set they played quite crappily. luckily for them their oponents played even crappierly (haha, new word).

pub after that, then home, now bed, just after i try to compile a small list of the volleyball vocab i've made them explain to me

• strike: schla


• do 3s and 4s (i think): iischla [it's hitting through 4 and it's ussen iischla]


• 2s (something about 2s): churzi (bim iischla) [hitting through 2, mitti iischla...]


• take!: hilf (vom passeur)


• front court: vorne


• back court: hinne

that's all i can remember right now. the rules are slightly different: you're not allowed to reach under the net even if you don't touch anything/anyone. they don't bother about 'carrying' i think it was (füere in swiss german) [it's lifting]. and cause their refs aren't always very good (according to one player, can't remember her name, there are too many of them) they often don't see the doubles either. i have to take care not to get any bad habits or i'll be in trouble when i get back. i'll definitely suck even more at refereeing no matter what i do now... ah well

now it really is time to turn off the computer! good night!

Labels: churchy stuff, i'm special, volleyball

so bampy and debbie and hannah all drove me back to bristol. dave was rather horrified at the mountain of bags the four of us carted into the house... so was i actually when i brought them downstairs ;-)

played in church this morning. expected it to be a snooze since there only my family and three elderly ladies go to that church (ok, today mim's boyfriend was there too, but that was actually good, cause he knew the songs). what i didn't count on was that although there were only 10 people singing, each of them was singing at a completely different speed to all the rest and with a totally different timing to the way it was written...

so it was a bit of a mare. i was trying to speed up then slow down again to somehow be more or less in time with the whole sound (so somewhere in between them all). got to the third or fourth song which sounds a lot like a hymn, so i thought this'll be fine, you can't go wrong with hymns. yeah, right! same thing, they spoilt that one too :( the last one i said to tom he had to sing loudly, cause there was no way i was slowing that on down to suit them, it just wouldn't have worked. it was 'blessed be your name', a really fun one to play, debbie called it a headbanger ;-) so i just went right through, and it was more or less ok. the old ladies and bampy didn't know it anyway...

got back to marion's just in time to join in the cleaning frenzy before the bonfire and hotdogs thing. managed to unload the dishwasher twice in the 3 hours i'd been here ;-) but the second time lucy (from church) was helping. the bonfire party was fun, the fireworks were good.

yesterday they were letting off fireworks across the road from debbie's house. (did i ever mention that i took thursday and friday off and went down to cardiff to visit my aunt debbie and the rest of my dad's family? well that's what i did anyway) debbie's really scared of fireworks. she thought it would be a good idea for us to run upstairs cause we'd have a better view from the window there (very sweet, she'd rather have hidden under the covers). but when we got up there in the dark room, a firework went off really loudly and unexpectedly and she jumped and her arm shot out and i got punched...

dave's loading his new cds onto his computer (it was his birthday on friday). while he's at it he's loading them straight onto my lovely little ipod :-D not going to run out of music tomorrow :-D

wonder which shoes i should wear to work tomorrow. so far i haven't had this problem, cause i only had the one pair (except for the size 7 heels which rub my feet bloody and the size 9 sandals which are wrong for this time of year anyway even if they weren't so much too big that i can't walk in them...). but now i've got four pairs of shoes/footwear that actually fit. the original trainers are covered in mud from our last wander, must have been tuesday, we wandered through some fields and along some very muddy paths, although stuart somehow managed to completely avoid sinking ankle deep into the mud. not fair! so i'd rather not wear them to work, should clean them. but they're falling apart anyway.

or i've got my lovely new white and pink trainers. but if i wear them i absolutely have to take either the old trainers or the walking shoes as well in case we go for another wander, cause there's no way i'm risking my lovely new shoes (can you tell i really like them?) even seeing mud from afar... same thing with the boots, except there's also the fact that i can't really face walking down the hill to the bus stop in two-and-a-half-inch heels...

so maybe i should just wear the walking shoes from the beginning, saves carting extra shoes with me which is probably a very weird thing to suggest anyway. but i did so want to wear my new shoes. i've gone absolutely mad (yes indeed, madder than i was before, i know it's hard to imagine, but that's the way it is) in church today i took my shoes off, cause i always put one foot under the other, my piano teacher tought me that my foot (the one that does the pedal stuff) has to be higher off the ground, he always put a big folder on the ground, but i can't be bothered i just stick the other foot underneath. so i didn't want to spoil my new shoes by sticking them on top of each other and kept taking them off and putting them back on when i went to sit back down. usually i'd get bored with it and decide not to bother anymore after the second time. it's a measure of how badly i've lost my mind that i did it every time i sat back down at the piano... ah well.

can't seem to work out how to link them so that my flickr pictures appear in this blog. i know, i'm an idiot. can't delete unwanted comments either which is why i moderate all comments, sorry. any other stupid stuff i can think of? nothing springs to mind straight away, but i'm sure there's loads... anyway, i've got some pics on flickr that i want to stick in the blog, but until/unless i can work out how, that's not going to happen because i have suddenly become to lazy to upload pictures to blogger (since i realised that it's a lot (really loads!) faster to upload them to flickr. of course they're in a really random order on flickr cause again i'm to thick to be able to organise them, but that's just tough! :-p

back to work tomorrow. yeay, fun!! i'm serious, i love it. only bad thing (more or less, not going into the whole 'the guy who's supervising me at the moment thinks everyone (including neil who is definitely ultra-clever (except that he thinks i'm bright (sorry for all the nested brackets))) is a comlete moron and explains absolutely everything to them (such as 1x1=1...) even though it's actually him who's...') anyway, the only bad thing is the weekly meeting which i'm not a big fan of, cause i have to explain what i've done the week before, so that involves a bit of stuttering and me not actually saying anything sensible at all... although last week's meeting was ok. but can't remember whether i actually did anything last week, it was such a long time ago. and such a short week...

dave's just got out another of his birthday pressies: first season of bones (based on the temperance brennan books by kathy reichs). so we're off to watch some gruesome tv hurray!!!

Labels: churchy stuff, shopping

tonight was sooo much better than the first evening. i'm ever so glad i decided to do alpha. i feel that some of the things that were said tonight make it worth the whole 6 evenings, even if it's rubbish from now on...

i would like to add a disclaimer here:
(a) people might have actually said something completely different to what i heard and have written here. if so, sorry ;-)
(b) i am not very good at expressing serious thoughts, so this might sound like a load of rubbish. i've actually written this post so that i can come back to it and see what i thought of tonight because i would hate to forget the stuff i realised tonight...

i never realised that the story of job is not meant to be taken literally. i feel like a right idiot, now that it's been pointed out to me it's pretty much obvious ;-) that gets rid of some horrible questions...

as a child job used to be my favourite story. every time we visited grandma and grandpa, that would be the story i asked grandpa for. i just loved the way job was so faithful and trusting, no matter what happened to him he always trusted god. it was kind of an ideal (i meant to put that 'l' there, i'm not turning into a bristolian...), that was how much we should put our faith in god.

marion told me how when i was about three or so, grandma was putting me to bed and praying with me. she prayed that one day i might come to know jesus. when she was done, i turned to her and said 'but grandma, i already know jesus!'... it really makes me think. a child's faith is so absolute, there's none of this intellectual confusion added. it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that i really did believe in god at that age, cause i can't remember that. it's nice to know. i'll have to ask grandma about it some time...

another thing i feel like a right idiot about, and for the same reason, is genesis. i always wondered how it could have been written as late as it was, or at all for that matter, and be actual history. of course this is another example of not taking the bible too literally. dave quoted someone: 'we take the bible seriously, not literally' or something to that effect. it was definitely an evening of 'duh' moments for me :-) this is what i was hoping for from alpha.

it's really helpful to have marion in our small group, because she can say what the leader can't say for fear of seeming to pushy (and stuff) but really does need to be said. cause i can't say it, i don't know it and the stuff i do know i tend to express so badly it's rather less than helpful. so i just sit there nodding a lot of the time.

of course today i had an excuse for not talking much: during dinner i nearly bit my tongue off... it was a bad bite, there was a lot of blood involved, so my beef tasted very salty ;-)

we were also discussing how jesus said 'i am the way [..] no-one comes to the father but through me' (please look it up before quoting me!!). i have always had difficulty with that, like a lot of people do, because it seems to be saying 'unless you know what i have done for you and accept that and follow after me, you will not be going to heaven' which seems very harsh and very much at odds with his message of compassion and that love is the first and main issue.

marion has shown me a different way of looking at it (she doesn't say it's the way or looking at it or anything, just a way it might have been meant). she says that when he says 'follow me' he means follow my teachings, follow my way... so someone who doesn't know about jesus or does not believe in him, but lives in a way that is loving and compassionate and in fact does follow jesus' teaching will come to the father, because he has followed jesus.

i'm not sure whether this next bit was actually what marion meant because she looked a bit surprised when i took it up, but i found this thought incredibly helpful. jesus is the way to god, him coming to earth and living his human life as he did and then dying to pay for our debt paved the way for us to come to god through faith and love alone, instead of the old testament/jewish way, which is to actually have to follow the law to the letter and never sin against it or else...

i'd just like to repeat: don't go and beat marion up cause you don't agree with this stuff. it's entirely possible that i've got the wrong end of the stick or maybe even the wrong stick... but it all makes sense to me (what i've written, not generally everything...)

Labels: churchy stuff

hmm. not what i expected. BUT, i have no idea what i was actually expecting... just that it wasn't what i got.

the talk was pretty much like a sunday service, i thought that was a bit weird. dinner was quite nice. didn't really get anything out of the small group discussion, but hopefully that'll get better as it goes on.

interesting, but also quite scary discussion with marion and dave afterwards. they've just realised what time it is so they're moving whichever kid is in their bed :-) i find marion quite difficult to follow, her mind works very differently from mine. the beer probably didn't help ;-) (that was after alpha, we went to the pub quickly)

of course we got there late, marion had to go get the babysitter. she was a bit late setting off and then he faffed around, i do believe that wasn't actually her fault. so we left at about 7.35 or 7.40. the whole thing was meant to start at half past...

marion was a bit worried about the babysitter so she told the kids 'he's not used to children, so i think you'd better just STAY ASLEEP'... i didn't know about this and was rather surprised when josh asked quite accusingly 'what are you doing tonight vicky?' (i.e. 'why can't you mind us, you're not so scary (mostly)?') cause usually the thought of me in charge is not something they like (josh's scared i'll eat the mint ice cream. he's right)

back to alpha. when we got to church andy (a neighbour) and i were ahead of the others and as we passed the back door of the church i jokingly said 'shall we creep in the back and pretend we were there all along' (it's what we tend to do on sunday mornings, so we end up without the handout and don't know what's going on...) we laughed and carried on. the others called us back, what were we doing, going the wrong way, so we went in the back door. came through the room where coffee is served after church (it's got a name i think, i just don't know it) where a load of people from church were queueing up for food. of course our instinct was to just join the queue, but we got chucked out into the main hall, where we had to go to the main entrance anyway to sign in and get our name tags and booklets...

anyway, it was interesting, but i do hope it gets better. will have to digest it a bit...

Labels: churchy stuff

played scrabble with marion last night. got a good start, as xor (exclusive or, a logical operator) was in the dictionary we'd chosen. marion lost a few goes, ire is not a verb so ires didn't count ('it ires me' was her example), and ya is an abbreviation, means young adult and maybe some other things, but not 'posh people say ya instead of yes', the dictionary didn't count it as a separate word...

but marion went to bed around ten thirty or so, and i'd only got up at twelve. so i stayed up chatting on msn and playing games online. was falling asleep at quarter past one, but somehow i ended up carrying on until i got so hungry i went to get myself some bread. there was a horrible moment when i couldn't find the bread and my sleeping brain translated that into 'NO FOOD! I'M GOING TO STARVE!!!' but the bread was actually on the table, so that was ok. and i realised afterwards that there is always cereal... eating woke me up, and i carried on until two thirty...

for the first time since i've been here we got to church on time, cause david was in charge as marion had to go earlier for some breakfast thing. i got up slightly earlier in anticipation of this, marion was not pleased as i'm usually ready only slightly before the kids. so today i got to church feeling quite relaxed instead of wanted to murder someone (which does tend to be my usual state, but church is the ideal place to calm me down). the service was really nice and the songs were beautiful, made me cry. only a tear or two, very discreet :-)

grandma and grandpa came for lunch. was a bit scary: grandpa said he had a bit of an upset tummy. he managed some chicken and vegetables, but afterwards when the icecream came out he refused! that is so not like grandpa, he jumps for joy when it's icecream time!

after lunch we went for a walk around blaise. it was really nice and relaxing. we almost managed to loose tom and josh, but it turned out they had gone the right way in spite of no-one having seen them...

went to the pub quiz, did miserably, couldn't have been much worse if we'd let a random word generator answer the questions for us... still fun though. on the way back marion and david suddenly realised that there's no child care lined up for tomorrow, cause his parents think they're supposed to be doing wednesdays now instead of mondays... what a palaver! they seem to have sorted something out, not sure who has to stay home now. as long as it's not me...

Labels: churchy stuff