in the words of tom goode..

the fecundity of my mind is quite terrifying sometimes

psalm 31:08-05

you opened my eyes to your wonders anew
you captured my heart with this love
nothing on earth is as beautiful as you

hurrumph

this is merely to register my astonichment and dismay, about a simple fact.
two years i've blogged
sal, two months
this is my 91st post
she has just done her 100th
so either she just blogs one word per post, or has more noteworthy things to say than me!
it makes me feel neglectful, like i'm a part-timer who's always being inconsistent to my poor readers
i never intended it to be so, dear readers, please forgive..

george, get set for a mind-blowing afternoon..

my boss is called george.
he's actually not even here. i think he couldn't bear the thought of the inevitable emotional farewell at 5 this afternoon, so he took the day off
he's pretty much hated me the whole time i've been here. he shouts at me for asking too many questions, and is still bearing grudges from the couple of times about six months ago that i pointed out things that made him look stupid. i've paid for them dearly. he's mean and grumpy and a bit tyrannical. he used to be in the navy. i think the military does that to you, lets you just talk to pople in a way that in the rest of the world would be called plain rude. anyway he never got over it. poor guy. he really loves his wife though, and she him..its just him at work..don't get that..
this afternoon i have straightened out all my wonderous spreadsheets that i've been working on for months, and got my stuff in order, thrown alot alot of paper in the recycling and thanked my lucky stars and my lovely lord that its nearly done....
to be honest, the agency seems to me to be one of the most pointless areas of government you can imagine. its not going to last very much longer though, so all the people that work here shan't have jobs in a year or so, which is sad. good for the treasury though. 20, 000 pounds every quarter on 400 mobile phones. 10, 000 pounds every quarter on first class train travel.
madness. and they do fuck all.
however, in the last seven months i have learned...
how to be a top-class rceptionista..
how to get excel to be your absolute bitch and do whatever you want it to do
(except how to make the values in a column into the values in a row instead, or vice versa..still not managed that one..)
how to do extreme filing
how to manage george so that i only get shouted at maybe once a week
that lotus notes is the single most irritating, time-wasting pain the ass ever
how to zip files and why it helps
lots of things about changing and editing phone extensions and how to set up phone groups so people in one room can answer eachother's phones without having to leave their own desk..
how to sudoku
how to use a franking machine without breaking it
how to break a laminator
how to befriend the one lady in the building that everyone else either hates or is scared of but who seems to want to adpot me
how to get the director to help you with the crossword
what an imei number is
that coronation chicken is my most consistently favourite sandwich
that i can still laugh..alot...even when i'm at a job i hate..

i really have laughed alot. i've moaned and grumbled and slagged the place but it has been good for me in many and unanticipated ways
agency, its been a blast
over and out

wise words..

so this guy at my work just said to me while we were each smoking our cutters outside..
"you need a kick up the ass girl"
i think he's right
i want to write, he wants me to write, we've both been doing the magazine stuff, and he thinks it something i need to be looking into actually doing instead of just whittering on about
i like people like that

time is running out..

is a song which, excuse me my musically-minded peers, i have only this week discovered. a song by muse, that got into my head a few days ago and has not yet left it.
its also a statement that is rather pertinent to me right now.
i have approximately 24.5 working hours left at my current place of employment. as of friday at 5pm, i'm gonne....the agency will mourn, but it will move on. me, on the other hand, i shan't mourn for the agency, but moving on might be the problem..
to where, for what, with what and for why.....?
answers, one more time, on a postcard. i'm serious, i need counsel!
oh yeah i went back to soul survivor...! just thought i'd sneak that one in...
btw can someone please start commenting...there's a bloody commenting frenzy going on on certain blogs of note these days and i feel so left out

do you come from a land down under

again, a great song
i just wanted to note, here, even though i only just blogged, that one of the little things i'm excited about about this weekend is that i met this really cool girl last weekend who is from australia and is trying to get soul survivor and just more prayer/loving jesus stuff happening generally down there..she was super cool and made clothes and badges to sell to make money to get it off the ground there and i wanted to buy everything. i just bought two green badges.
i promise you, that was the first time, walking away from chatting to her, that i've ever wanted to go ot australia. they are having their first soul survivor hopefully in jan 2006...i think i'd like to go.
imagine, faith is so young in that nation..real vibrant fiath is virtually foetal. we are so lucky to live here where so much has gone before, where so many have already made mistakes we can learn from, or have sowed into what we can now walk as our land or created things that have become established places for god to come and infiltrate and work through.
it strikes me that the problems i have with the theology of all that stuff, with finding stuff of good or bad in the land itself, and with carrying on, spiritually, with the baton that older generations have passed down to us....well this is my problem with it all
what do you do in a land where faith in jesus has no real family tree? we can hear preach after preach on wesley or howells or tolkein and lewis and we can watch 24/7 unravel over the last five years and can go to soul survivor as grumpy teenagers and hate it but go home having pulled and having learnt something new of god that he will use in us when we're 25 and willing to listen..
a breathing, living serving church is going to emerge in australia sometime..but it has nothing to emulate..no history to either shrug off or perpetuate. (and no, hillsongs doesn't count...!)

i'm hoping to hang out with her again this weekend.

summer camp..

seems i can't get enough of the tent-life this summer
i'd wager i've actually spent more time in a tent this summer than oria, who had at its start expressed a wish to inhabit hers for the whole season.
camping while still going into work everyday was brilliant. it probably wouldn't have worked out quite so well if i hadn't have honed such amazing skills of make-up application while in a car....but thankfully i have..many years ago
anyway i am curious as to why camping is so great...when it rained last week, mid-way through the five days of camping, i had that minute-long decision maker of - how is this going to wreck the time here...? - it wasn't a hard decision...in all fairness, mud and rain at glastonbury without working showers or the potential to ever be dry again is one thing..camping with your own patio heater is quite another.
the rain doesn't have to ruin anything, in fact i love the noise of the rain pouring down when i'm tucked up in bed in my tent...its lovely.
this is quite possibly one of the most pointless posts i've ever made on here....
but when i leave work in a few hours i'm off, for another few sleeps under some plastic sticks and some canvas. the west country is in for a stormy few days, so i'm partly steeling myself here, and partly revelling in the fact that i am off, again, making the most of the summer, my youth and the three day weekend i've bagged myself...
one more week left at work and all's well. i'm learning how, in my head, to say no, so that when the end of next week comes and they ask me if i can in anyway stay one more week, i'm ready with an answer. the right answer.

i fear i may be losing the ability to blog. or at least the ability to blog to inform or entertain in anyway
dear and loyal reader, i apologise...
camping-focused prose is, i am sure, not what you signed up for.
i'm just happy about it that's all

all these things that i've done

is such a song by the killers
such a song
everytime i listen to it i'm scared, at the start, that i'll find out i'm bored of it, but it still does it for me everytime
so yeah i went to soul survivor
i had anticipated feeling awkward and cross, and out of place and frustrated with chrisitans and all the usual baggage that goes along with me at a christian event. but something happened which i think involved god teaching me how to love his people more...i am usually so enraged by the mediocrity of the songs, the blandness of the words being spoken, and irritated by the characters themselves.
i think it had a lot to do with the fact that i was with rusty, who seems to manage his own similar frustrations and its like they just help him want god more, instead of just settling for wanting church less...
it was also something to do with the fact that i was such a free agent there, not attached to any one church, denomination, group or idea..and do you know, i never once had to have the conversation of - oh so what church do you go to then - oh, well, i don't, i just love god, hang out and live my life...
not once
i enjoyed that unique feeling of being able to just talk to people - primarily the others of the smokers, not many, granted, but still fun - and not feel like a freak for making conversation with strangers, and letting yourself love them quickly..i also found something new - or actually, old, but buried - in me, while i was working on the world tribal stall in the market place..
i've secretly always wanted to be a market trader person..a bit like i've always quietly wanted to be a real gypsy..its amazing how it brings your life to a new and necessary level of interaction. yeah, granted, you're talking to people in the hope that they'll buy a drum and make someone you love richer..! but behind it all there's also the love of being amused, the sheer joy or being fully yourself with someone you met a minute ago and in a minute's time will be out of your life forever..well, til heaven..
the pesky kids who just wanted to come and play the drums everyday were hilarious. there was one that we called hawk eyes who was about 18, but devilishly attractive, and who i thought, lord, if i was quite a lot younger....and they fascinated me, these kids that just wanted to play the drums..it made them so happy, and having spent years practising together, it was always one of those rare glimpses at how well boys can really love and know eachother when they let themselves.
spending time with emily dunnett was very high up in the fun and love stakes for me too. she inspires me so much to love god and love the bible and eat it up like its all that's ever going to do her any good. which is true, and that's what i want..seeing her with jono was amazing, seeing how god can really knit two people together in ties that they enjoy, believe in, but can't explain and can only marvel at.
i bought some books about god for the first time in years..in fact, i think i generally just loved god more than i have in years..singing to him along with onehundredhours was really lush..shit word to attempt to describe it with, but there you go..there really aren't any..
having said all that, campfire times every night were the sweetest part...the illegal alcohol, the heater, the fags and the wet grass...every now and again hearing a recently-bought djembe being practised on in the distance..learning new words..making up new words..talking about prayer like its real and not just a lord of the rings-esque fantasy..wanting to know it as real..you know, those kind of campfire times..
again, who would have thought...? not me
spare me my cynicism god please

who would have thought...

i'm at soul survivor
and i don't want to leave
strange times we live in...
xxxxxxxxxx

and the five gold stars go to..

do you know, i was good at my job today..
this week has been so busy at work...moving people and all their possesions from floor to floor, in the great Rebrigading, as it has been bizarrely termed...people have been nearly rioting, and so i've been helping them pack up all their stuff, handing out name tags..counselling them that their world really isn't going to fall apart because they now have to hotdesk..
i don't know, i never wanted to be a good administrator, but now that i am, its actually strangely satisfying.
i like haring around and sorting stuff out for people and showing them how to do stuff or answering questions and fixing things that are broken
its two minutes to five, and i just wanted to register with you, that it has, against all odds, been a good week
loveanna x x

world domination..

i feel like i should have a big map and be sticking pins in it...
today has been gmail Invitation Day..have sent out loads
and all afternoon i've been getting gmail team emails saying *so and so has accepted your invitation to gmail*....hooray!!
anyone want one...?!

or maybe a week..

so i went to manchester
actually no, first, can i just say, i'm so glad its wednesday. i've been ready for this week to be over since it started, and wednesday is sure-fire evidence that the week is trying hard to be done.
i have fourteen days left at my job.
and a trip with rusty to an unnamable location before the fourteen days are up.
so yes i went to manchester and had an odd but good time. remembered just how involved life there can get, and at the same time how fun, pure fun, laughing and laughing kind of fun. friday night was brilliant, we were farewelling olivia - still can't believe that on her last night, at about 4 am, i realised for the first time that her two names could be made into bolivia....what a waste of five years
and so we had a dance and some fun chats and some useful chats and some great tops five....as it became..and then kebabs...and sang danny boy on the bus which i only remembered about yesterday...and then i realised i was glad to be moving back. at the table in ponana just towards the end we realised that in six weeks i'd be the only one of us at the table living in manchester. (not sure of the grammatical soundness of that last sentence...ought it to be *we realised that in six weeks i'll be the only one that lives...*any takers..)
i spent saturday in a pleasant succession of appointments, breakfast with claire, then with george and claire, a four hours all-told stint in the opposite bbc nero's...then patrick waite - who, since looking at his blog yesterday properly...turns out his name might actually be patrick - all confirmation or denial glad welcome..the chicken and pesto something in revolution now comes highly recommended.
now, i'd like to talk about a film which i then proceeded to watch with some friends at blair road...the day had been designated Duvet Day, although I do not recall any duvets actually being present in the end. i did have, however, a hangover, which is a horrible substitute for a duvet.
so we watched something french and i was so tired and weak that i cried because i could not read the subtitles.
so i carried on crocheting instead and i was fine.
then we watched something which, dear reader, i should like very much to discuss with you
before sunset
now, i love ethan hawke. don't get me wrong, i don't like or admire the guy, i love him, and he has held my regard for longer than any other man of my acquaintance. however this particular film was not to my liking. the wierd thing was that i should have liked it. in theory, it would be a top five contender even. nothing happens, and its visually beautiful, therefore i should love it. but no
now, either my heart has continued its steady shutdown towards and in readiness for the barren spinster life that awaits me, to the point where i cannot even enjoy the notion of others being in love any more. or it was full of predictable lines and events that my wizened cynical mind was just glad it didn't pay money to see. i don't know, but when some of the people you love most in the world are in raptures over a movie that you yourself know you should, by rights, be squealing with joy over, something's wrong isn't it?
so when the movie was done and the joy of my friends was complete. i felt i should be elsewhere. so went to see phil and laura. and what an evening. lovely, is all i want to say.
and now i am taking for my lunch a poppy- and sesame-seed bagel with slices of apple and banana
again, healthy and smug
oh still reading pride and prejudice...so cross yesterday..reading it on reception...left to go home, at the point where he's about to ask her to marry him - the first time....realised on the bus that i'd left it in work...drats.
i should go, i'm rambling again

breakfasting at one's desk...again

turns out i like bringing my breakfast to work with me.
today its nice orange juice with bits and a muffin
problam is, what with avoiding my boss, eating, checking emails and doing the morning blog round, i actually only start work right about now..10.24...
slacker
so, what news from the mark?
well, it seems i have lost all ability to type, just had to re-do this very sentence about six times.
can't believe its august