the howie

I will never get sick of this

Remember when i used to blog more often

Yesterday I turned 28

Today I bought some T-shirts and a TV receiver for my mac.

Tomorrow I have to clean the turtles tank.

My Hero

I helped make this little video today, It amuses me.

no hope….

voting results for my electorate

I voted GREEN

I have been feeling pretty crap the last few days, coughing, snot production, wheezing, general light headeness, some would call it a cold.

Well this morning I woke up at around 7am with some lovely cramping pains my my bowel region, not what you want when you have to catch a plane. The cramping led to a few bathroom visits inbetween packing suitcases, packing the car and stopping Oscar from de-alphabatising our DVD’s. All in all a stressful morning. I wasn’t feeling any better by leaving time and we had a big day ahead.

The rest of the days was spent in a car, in an airport, in a plane, in an airport, in a car, in a house, in a supermarket back in the house.

Then around dinner time i headed off to the bathroom again.

After dinner for some reason I put my hand on my bum (outside of my jeans)

My hand came back sticky and covered in a brown substance, this FREAKED me out!

I quickly removed me pants to dicover the outside of my jeans in the bum area had some brown something smeared on it.

After the days events this is not something i wanted to see,  how long had it been like this, and more importantly was it what i thought it might be…please don’t be.

then using my smartness i thought, look inside the jeans and if its brown in there you wont be able to blog about this but if its clean you can spin it into some blog story.

Turns out i had sat in some chocolate, I found the culprit chair in the dining room of this little house.

Oporto’s tag line is ‘Just Gotta Go’

It seems one customer was very committed to this.

Is it just me or are jars and bottles getting harder and harder to open.

I find myself ripping my hands to shred trying to open soft drink bottles, jars of pasta sauce and other condiments.

Sometimes I even have to abort the mission and either try a different bottle / jar or give up and have something else.

Or am i just getting weaker and weaker???

Day of redundancy - avoid headaches, drink lots of water, have lunch with a good friend.

Day 1 - Eat cake for breakfast in the park with good buddies, have hot chips for morning tea and a chicken burger for lunch and donuts for afternoon tea. hat with others who got redundentarized too.

Day 2 -  Eat lots of chocolate, ice cream and chicken. Chat with others who got redundentarized too.

Day 3 - have a small piece of chocolate for breakfast without wife noticing, have a healthyish roll for lunch then take advantage of rail workers strike and take son for a free adventure on the train.

Being made redundant for doing a good job is strange place to be in.

It was my dream job, I had wanted to work for this organisation for 8 years before I finally got a job with them. Then I got a job and spent the first year thinking I wasn’t good enough to be working for this organisation, that I didn’t have the skills and that everyone else was much smarter than me. The next year and a half I found my groove and enjoyed almost every minute of it. I was learning, i was working with amazing people and most of all I was seeing young people stepping up and fighting for the injustices of our world.

Then suddenly on a winters friday I entered a meeting room to find out about some structural changes.

The new structure didn’t include me and many of my colleagues.

I didn’t really show any emotion in the meeting, I was pretty hurt but felt that showing that hurt was not going to change the situation and would just leave me with a headache. I quietly finished off some transitional work and left that afternoon.

The thing that is causing the most discomfort at the moment is that I think I was doing a pretty good job, I’m sure I wasn’t amazing and I know i definitely   had some ‘growth areas’ but on the whole I fell that I was making a valued and help contribution to the mission and goals of the organisation and also the kingdom.

I really don’t want to be bitter or have hatred towards the organisation, the reason I wanted to wrok for them for so many years is because i believed and appreciated the way they went about doing their thing. And I still have those same feelings, they are still the organisation that I think has the best approach to community development in poor communities, they still have a great way of doing education in Australia.

I was a victim of a structural change that was the result of a refocus on the organisastions strategies for operating.  I don’t agree with all the changes and not just because I lost my job but I would defiantly still love the opportunity to work at this organisation again in the future.

But to be honest being made redundant is still not a good feeling no matter what the reason, So i’m going to take a bit of time to lay low and think and pray about what the future holds.

that is all.

Our only hope….

I know at some stage boys don’t want to be affectionate with their fathers anymore. I assume it will come in the mid primary school years. for Oscar it seems to have come at 19 months.

Often I ask for little hugs, this morning it went like this.

Me: Hey Oscar can I have a little hug?

Oscar: No No No

Me: oh

Then I did what parents are probably not supposed to do. But it worked so I don’t care.

Me: Hey Oscar if you give me a hug you can play with my iPhone

Oscar: Dah (means yah or yes)

then I received a hug and in return he got to play with my iPhone for a minute or less.

I turned up at work this morning to find raw sewage flowing down onto the footpath from the first floor of my work building.

it didn’t smell nice.

I went back down 20 mins later and it was still flowing. People in this building must go to the toilet a lot, not me, I find the toilets scary.

A Parable written by Mike Dicker from Salt Youth

There were some there who wanted to stop the boats of refugees coming in Australia so Jesus told them this parable:

Jesus said “There was once an orphanage that housed many children. Some orphans would find a new family in a new place if they went through the official adoption process that took many years.”

Jesus continued “One day the orphanage came under new management by evil men. One night the new managers set fire to the orphanage saying ‘we will destroy the building, kill the children and rebuild’. And there was a great and terrible fire. That night the children tried to flee the flames and seek shelter with a new family in a new place. Many children perished but some managed to escape and reached a new place of shelter that was open and spacious with many empty rooms, but the people who lived in that place said to themselves ‘Who are all these children? They have not come to us through the official adoption process. Surely they will fill up our empty rooms and spacious grounds! We must turn them back from here and ill treat them that they may warn others not to come to our land.’
So the people of that place turned some of the children around and sent them back into the fire where they perished. Others they locked in small cages for many years before also sending them back into the great fire where they too perished.”

Those standing near by were outraged by this and said “Teacher, why tell us this parable? This is a terrible and monstrous act! May the Lord bring judgment upon those wicked men and the people of that land for this injustice!”

Jesus said “Truly I tell you, you are the people of that land! You brood of vipers, you evil snakes! You enjoy this spacious land with many empty rooms!”

If you like this parable why not email it to Tony.Abbott.MP@aph.gov.au and Julia.Gillard.MP@aph.gov.au

I have 2 free tickets to ‘inception’

valid at Hoyts, Greater Union, Village, EVENT, Reading, Palace, Wallis, Dendy, AMC, Ace, Grand, ………….

who wants them?