Should left-handed gladiators be rulers of Rome?

I'm finished!! I just had my last exam (Classics, which was a heck of lot better than History!!). By 'last' I should clarify that that's the last one of two, both strangely scheduled to be in the last possible week of exams - today's even the last day of the exam period! Underground plot by faculty staff to delay our holidays? All gut instincts lead me to 'yes'. (and by 'yes' I mean 'no, how ridiculous').



Not that I'm complaining - I've been filling up my pre-exam time with a kind of pseuso-pre-holidays. Been doing lots of work to fill the time, as well as doing whatever miscellanious and various 'things' need to be done to prepare for the pilgrimage next year, which I'm helping lead on... and which is scarily starting to really happen!

Random question/opinion poll - has anyone been watching Torchwood? It's a new show, I think it's spin off of Dr Who, been on the last couple of weeks. I've been watching it and think it's pretty good - it's got the whacky, random, out of this world (haha, literally!) storylines like Dr Who, but contained to this time and world.... Entertaining, buuut I'm not sure I'll be clutching at the remote to turn it on each week.

Something else I've been filling my time with is reading (yay! note the neat seguay?) - this week I'm reading 'A Love Worth Giving' by Max Lucado. I used to read a lot of his stuff, and it was pretty influential particularly when I was a new (or newly re-committed) Christian in high-school. It's been a while since I've read the more inspirational type of Christian book, and it's pretty refreshing. I don't know how he does it, but he manages to take one small phrase and unlock all these deeper meanings and relevances that I hadn't seen before.



Take this example, in the chapter about that sometimes underrated verse/phrase 'love is kind', talking about God's kindness:



'I wonder, how many burdens is Jesus carrying for us that we know nothing about? We're aware of some. He carries our sin. He carries our shame. He carries our eternal debt. But are there others? Has he lifted fears before we felt them? Has he carried our confusion so we wouldn't have to? Those times when we have been surprised by our own sense of peace? Could it be that Jesus has lifted our anxiety onto his shoulders and placed a yoke of kindness on ours?'



Dad's in England for a couple of weeks at the moment, and this week has been in London. Yesterday police found (and disabled) a couple of cars filled with explosives that were in the area where Dad was going to go to the theatre tonight - one only a hundred metres away from the theatre where he would have been! Eep! An example of what could have happened, in a way like it talks about in that ^. So with God's kindness in mind, I'm thanking Him for that!!


Just to add some colour, here's a pic from the youth bonfire we had up in Norton Summit last week. The more I look at it - the movement, the lines, the swirls, the straights - the more I love it! I was going to put up more, but I think this post is long enough for now! :)

well this is a little awkward...

HAHA!!

snuggery

Is it unusual that I tried to warm up my pyjama top for so long on the oil heater that when I put it on two of the buttons had semi-melted and plewped off?

But damn it warm pj's feel so good to put on! The buttons were a justified sacrifice that had to be paid...

of all times...

to blog after a rather lengthy hiatus, it has to be 12:07 am on a Sat night/Sun morning, however you define it! Maybe it's because I've got no major distractions/excuses right now apart from going to bed, which is always strangely tempting to put off, regardless of how much I regret my lack of sleep in the morning...


In defence of my lack of postiness, I did attempt too last week (procrastinating, of course there had to be some sort of blog involvement in there, to be fair). That would be post would've contained something like this:

Anthropology: Conflict and Crisis: Major Essay

Is conflict a performance?
If so, what social, cultural and political purpose does such performance serve?

Yes conflict is a performance.
But for the sake of this essay, I’ll say, no, conflict isn’t a performance.
Oh and look at that, because it isn’t a performance, is doesn’t serve any social, cultural or political purpose, so I may as well not go on because there is nothing else to say.
To conclude, this is an awesome and flawless argument, well deserving of at LEAST 100%.

Seemed fair at the time.

Needless to say, I did end up actually writing it after my attack of severe first-line-is-always-the-hardest-to-write-ness!

It was actually a very interesting subject (and essay, hopefully!).

How's about a brief recap of the past week of my uber exciting life...
In this past week I:

• Finished and handed up afore mentioned essay.



• Went to (and even entered!) the Foosball competition with Lib and Lisa, with money going to a great cause. It was lots of fun!



• Saw 'End of the Spear' with Lisa and some of her Teen Mission crew



• Joined Facebook (still holding out on Myspace...)



• Discovered I could throw sheep at various people via Facebook. I did so to Ez...



• Worked (about 25 hours...)(Bakers Delight at Norwood, feel free to visit me anytime...:)



• Discovered Mt Lofty gardens for the first time, with my family



• Developed a penchant for sitting on oil heaters, and my new beautifully warm slippers



• And other stuff... (my attention span is short at this time in the morning!)
  

At this very moment I'm sitting in front of our fire, watching the tri-nations on mute - yay the Wallabies have just made an awesome comeback (from South Africa: 10, Aust: 3, to South Africa: 10, Aust: 16!!)!

Also... preparing stuff for the first meeting about the 2008 pilgrimage which is happening tomorrow afternoon... eep! I'm feeling excited, and maybe even a bit passionate about it, though - I'm doing the what/why go on a pilgrimage section, which has been a clarifying process for me to go through as well (to know why a pilgrimage isn't just a 'glorified holiday'!)

Here's a couple of good quotes I found:

"A pilgrim is someone who goes on a journey in the hope of encountering God, or meeting Him in a new way" - Tom Wright (/N.T.Wright)

and

…" we may and often will meet Jesus in the most unlikely and unexpected places: not only in cathedrals and obvious holy places, not only in liturgy and music, but in the street, the school and slum, in the poor and the suffering" - (also) Tom Wright

And just to make it a nice rounded post with a piccie- I want this tee:!!

This brings us to the end of a slightly random and disjointed post!

Sleep well