Blue light.....

It's my week for the Graceway lamp. I know this, 'cos Gareth said so when he handed it to me tonight. (thanks, G) This lamp was given to us just over a year ago, when Mark was inducted as our pastor. Can't believe how fast that year disappeared!
I look at it, and think of our community. This was a good week for it to come to me - I need reminding about belonging. Like the cane we are all woven together. It also reminds me of the reading we had from Mark tonight, where Jesus called the fishermen. I like the light shining through, and I like the shadows it casts on the wall behind. I like the way it comes to church, is part of our visual worship environment, and then it goes home with someone different. I like that Gareth thought to give it to me, and I like that I have a week to think about who to pass it on to next. I like that it's no big deal if I forget to take it next week, or if I want to keep it for an extra week.
I am glad that I have this visual reminder of who I am and where I belong, to shine in my home for this next week.
(ps, I'm not still grumpy, but I am very tired!)

Grumpy

It must be a factor of being Friday night. I'm decidedly grumpy and out of sorts with the world. Too tired and feel pressured from all angles. Blegh.
This afternoon I was trying to write a job description for a "body" to take over some of the responsibilities I had last year before they increased exponentially. This is a delightfully good thing, but last thing on a Friday, with a shout down in the staffroom courtesy of the Athletics day organisers, not something I really wanted to be doing. The sooner I polish it to my satisfaction (my one big chance to dot all the I's and cross all the T's), the sooner we have someone else sharing the load. It's that wonderfully "Catch 22" situation, where you're soooooo frantically busy that there's no time to actually try and delegate effectively. It'll happen, I know it will, and soon. Meanwhile....
(did I say I was grumpy??)

HOT!!!!

Today was a blisterer! Just perfect for the whole school to gather across the road at the large sports domain for the athletics sports. One of the senior boys broke a javelin record that had stood since 1988, and he didn't even look like he was trying. He smashed it by 11m!!!! I got to be solitary crowd control on the highway at day's end, with several hundred bodies descending on my crossing at once like lemmings. "NO, stoopid, do you have a death wish?? Do NOT cross those 5 lanes of traffic until the lights change and the crossing buzzer goes!"

Concerts in the park

Finally got around to offloading from my camera the photos from Goldenhorse gig in the park a couple of weekends ago. Good to hear some stuff off the upcoming album, & to enjoy the time with friends. Mark got into the groove, and proved it's never too early to introduce the next generation to good sounds!

(not that you can see all that much of Soph!)

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~*~ Mother Teresa's Prayer ~*~

I came across this prayer, this weekend. I will try and hold it in mind throughout Lent. I'm a pretty slow learner, though.

 

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
...Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
...Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
...Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
...Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
...Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
...Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
...Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
...Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

When I was looking for that one, I also came across this saying, by Mother Theresa. I rather liked it also:

    "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."

I've been thinking about being kind, recently. To myself and others. About what it is in relationships with those we care about that make them different from those with people we know as acquaintances or colleagues. I think there's a lot of kindness involved when someone knows your heart. I am touched when the people I care about reciprocate in grace and kindness, and I must be more prepared to follow the words in the prayer, when they don't.

a bit of a plug...

... for those of you living within a bulls roar of Auckland, you really really ought to go and check out Maladict's Fix, a great new cafe my friends recently opened at Clark's Beach. Complete with permission from Terry Pratchett himself, it is named after the vampire character in one of his books who has given up his addiction to blood, and turned to coffee instead.

I went out last Sunday, taking a friend, and you couldn't get friendlier service anywhere else in Auckland. Not only that, but it's backed with a silver medal in the BP New Zealand Coffee Festival last year, in the espresso category. WOW!!! Can't say fairer than that! Get your butts out there and check it out. And there's no excuse, either, if you're not local - check out the link in my previous post, and you can order online!

no whinges today

Yeah, that's right. It's Saturday morning, I'm drinking a fine cup of Zeke's Howler Monkey blend, it's raining (which means that at last it's a bit cooler, yay), and although it turned quite sour in the middle, my week finished well.

The car turned out to have a broken alternator belt. Which, in it's turn, turned out to only be worth $18 ish to replace, + labour. I phoned a colleague to get her recommendations for a local service garage, one that I can easily access from work, and as a result have scored a real "find". Fantastic service, trust & reliability. I got held up at work the next night (that's a whole different story.....), so they just left the keys at the petrol station in front for me to pick up. All this without ever having sighted me - all done over the phone. They were fine about me coming in the next day to pay. WOW!!!!! Have booked it in again for next week for a service and some other bits and pieces I've been putting off.

So, got held up at work... We've been trying to sort some classes this week, it becoming more and more urgent as the day approached when we began full timetable. It became more and more obvious that things weren't working, and on Thursday afternoon, when I sat down with the new HOD to check stuff, it didn't take us long to realise that we had to start again from scratch. This being mainly cos of the duff data I'd been supplied by my last year's 2IC. I should have known that I ought to just start from the beginning again myself, but I have this naturally gullible streak that wants to believe that others are competent. Ah well. It made me look really useless, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that I'd done my best with what I'd been given. And, not only that, it was finally something for new-boss to get his teeth into, and it felt SO GOOD to walk out at 6.20 and know that for once I was leaving someone else to do the work! Yayayayayayayay! The upshot was that on Friday we started timetable, and basically had to tell that year level that we were just filling time for that period, and they'd be with their "real" teacher next week. Oh, and new-boss is sorting the workload issue for me, too, it seems. Well Hallelujah!

So, it all ended well. I walked out on Friday afternoon, knowing that I still have 1001 things to do, but that I'm not in the front of the firing line any more. SO pleased:)

where to start...

So, this is the year that everything is going to be better, right?
Yeah, right, as Tui would have it.
I don't know if I can be bothered working too far backwards from tonight
(although at some point I will rave about what a great summer it was - it
just seems an awful long time ago now, and has been well eclipsed by the
huge hours I've been working again at school).
Tonight my fanbelt broke, when I was halfway down the Highway. It took the
AA towtruck about an hour and a half to get there (in the meantime my friend
appeared to rescue me with KFC), and I felt quite bereft!
Friend said "I wish I'd brought my camera", and I realised "ooh... I have
one on the phone". so I amused myself while nice bloke was loading it by
taking photos. I do like to watch men work. Well, anyone, really, who's not
me. cos it just seems that in the last 2 weeks, all I've heard about is how
much people are enjoying this wonderful weather we are now having, and I'm
stuck in a pokey office, behind my computer. Started feeling QUITE
resentful.

On the other hand, I do need to say that new-boss is going to be great.
Really great. He's Irish, but most recently been teaching in a private boys
school in Surrey. Has a SCREAM of a sense of humour. It just takes more time
than I'm currently wanting to know about to transfer all the information
about stuff that has to happen yesterday. But I know it will get better.
Till tonight, I didn't think it could get any worse!