Mum
I have some disturbing news. My mum has been diagnosed with breast cancer. We received the results of the tests today. So now it is a matter or deciding which surgery option to take. It sounds like surgery will give a good chance of getting rid of it permanently, which is good, so please pray that God will work mightily in this situation. Our God is an awesome God, and can do all things.

The TV Psalm



Given to me by Andrew Macpherson some time ago. I thought at least some of you who haven't seen it would appreciate it.



The TV is my shepherd, I shall not want,

it makes me lie down on the sofa.

It leads me away from the scriptures,

it destroys my soul!

It leads me in the paths of sex and violence

for the sponsors’ sake.

Yea, though I walk in the shadow of my Christian

responsibilities,

There will be no interruptions

for the TV is with me.

Its cable and remote control,

they comfort me.

It prepares a commercial before me;

in the presence of my carnality;

It anoint my head with humanism,

my coveting runneth over.

Surely laziness and ignorance shall follow me

all the days of my life, and I shall dwell

in the house watching TV to the end.



Allan's Blog

My friend Allan now has a blog. Allan's Blog





Time

Is too fast for me. Thus I cannot post. For in 7 hours I must arise, and set about my business. Isn't it amazing how fast time goes. It's not so long ago that it was this time last year! And when you think of it, doing that 70 odd times isn't really that much longer than an hour or two. Life is short. Eternity isn't. Do you know God?

Apologies

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I will try properly tomorrow night. Not that the comments have been flowing in much anyway.



Mother

My mum is waiting on the results of some tests. Please pray for that. Peter Warner came round to encourage us today. I'm glad he was made person of the week, He is such an example of living the Christian life.



Macintosh Mac PPC

Could the owner/user of this computer please identify themselves! I have been wondering who this person is. I don't know anyone who uses one, and yet they seem to read my blog, making up 1% of the traffic.



Mind Siege

Started reading a good book called Mind Siege. The first chapter was set in 2010, and was scary. It was trying to show what could happen if Christians continue in their 'live and let live' philosophy, instead of getting on in the world and changing things. Will tell you more as I proceed in this book.



God bless you all.

Of Women

Haha. I'll bet that caught your attention. But really it's not all that exciting. Well they aren't are they... whoa let's not even go there. I might isolate 50% of my audience. But that is not why I wrote the heading. Recently I have been receiving emails about Russian mail order brides. A rather bizarre concept I feel. Does one get a form and tick appropriate boxes, like "height < 1.65m", or "Can drive manual", or "has own tractor'? And once you fill in this form, does your russian bride get posted back to you, and if so what kind of diet is she on, and if so what kind of special powers does she have. Does she use them for good, or for awesome? (For good or awesome?)



Person of the Week

Goes to Peter Warner. Last night at a very important congregational meeting, he reminded us not to be annoyed with people who had made mistakes, and get a them and us mentality. He reminded us that we are a body, and there is no them and us.

Weight

Since beginning my job at Tip Top, I have put on 5kgs. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come. Instead of a lean, handsome Scott, you're going to see a rolly polly handsome Scott with a big gut which hangs out over his shorts. Scary stuff even.



Weekend Away With The Boys

We're taking away some of the guys from youth group. Please pray that this would be a fruitful time of building kingdom relationships. Please also pray that it would be a time of spiritual awakening, and application of biblical truths to all of our lives.



Jono's Blog A dying blog

Jono's blog is dying. But I suspect a bit of the old shock comment treatment may be enough to resurrect old Trevor. My name is Trevor, and...... Let's spam Jono's comments and beg him to start blogging again!



Bed

Hey Steve. I need to go to bed. I can do it. I will do it nine times.

Collective Ignorance and Meetings or "None of us are dumb as all of us."

It's funny I should post this after attending a very useful planning meeting for the Japan Cafe on Saturday. But this is not a criticism of particular meetings, but just a general comment. So ain't nobody take some offence. Anyway, I was thinking about meetings. Seems to me that many people tend to think of meetings as bringing the best ideas and the best of people together, and coming up with a better result. You know the old saying that goes "Many hands make light work." But it seems to me that this need not be the case, because there is the old dichotomy of sayings. One the one hand, "many hands make light work", but on the other, "too many cooks spoil the broth." Could it not be possible that fallible sinful humans meet together, and their worst ideas combine to produce the worst outcome? Sure I hear you say.... look at parliament. Exactly. But then did I ever say I thought democracy was the way to go. We need a Scotocrocy. The rule by Scot. But that is by the by. My theory on meetings is fairly simple really. A short meeting is a good one. Not only that, the fewer people the better.



The Flood

The flood was a localised one. It was not worldwide. It was not even factory wide. It was localised to the chemistry and microbiology lab. Oh yes that's right. The laboratory flooded today. Did it flood at 2:05 when I would have been gone? No not at all. Did it flood at 1:55 when I was just about to go? Ahhhh.... yes. I was washing the dishes when one of the technicians commented that someone had spilt water over near her bench. It soon became clear that it was more than a spill. That became clear when it started gushing out from the bottom of the wall on both sides, and coming out the lino. Yes it was spectacular. Apparently a pipe had burst inside the wall. Well we got an engineer down, who took a look and said. "Oh that's not good." Yes exactly. I can say that and I'm not an engineer. And then he said. "It's coming from inside the wall." Well so it was. But he was actually quite a legend, and managed to shut the flow off by going off somewhere. Well me and one of the other technicians scouped it up in containers into a big 20 litre bucket. We kept a tally, and worked out after the clean up that we had pulled up over 500 litres of water.

Ok. I need to set a few things straight. My feathers have been ruffled due to a few fowl accusations which have been flying about. These accusations have mainly been centered on the size of the poultry I consumed last night. Accusations have been made indicating the paltry nature of this specimen of poultry. Now I don't really want anyone thinking I'm chicken or anything, so I have a message for those turkeys. It was a big one! So stop hen pecking me.





Hmm I really had to get that out of my system. Sorry. Well I'm about to go to bed, as I'm on the 6:00 shift this week, and as up until recently, 5:00 am hasn't been on my list of reasonable waking hours.



Oh yes. Welcome to Priscilla! Even though you mocked my butter mince.



(Note to self - remember to post about collective ignorance and meetings.)

Just a quickie tonight. Man I was so hungry tonight. I went to woolworths, and bought a whole chicken and a bread and some macaroni cheese. I got home and punished the whole chicken! I hope it wasn't gluttony, but man I was so hungry. Well I'm on to the Macaroni Cheese now, and then I'm going to do some Greek study for the exam on Monday. So for those of you who remember me in your prayers, please pray for clarity of thought on Monday.



Well the fires a goin, the bean bags a sittin next to it, and the kettle is a singin (well it would be if it had some sort of whistling aparatus attached to it), and the Greek notes are a callin me. I'm sorry folks but I'm a gunna leave you.



Isn't it amusing how this blog has degenerated into fireside chats with Scott over his eating habits. Ok I'll try to remedy that from now on. More other stuff, less food talk.

I made butter mince for dinner last night. Yes butter mince due to the fact that I had no chicken to butter. Sad but true. But actually it tastes quite nice.



Today was an amusing day. I woke up at 7:05. Well more like I opened one eye thinking shucks why hasn't my alarm gone off yet and looked at the clock. And then was out of bed in a shot. I yelled at Jono (who was in bed) "make me a sandwhich I'm running late! I quickly got clothed, found some glasses, grabbed my key and ran out to the kitchen. There was Jono wrapped in his duvet buttering me a sandwhich. It was comical. I grabbed the sandwhich (telling Jono he was a legend), jumped in the car and carefully stopping at Stop Signs set off to work. Well I prayed to God, "Please don't make me too late", not that it was a real major or anything. Anyway the traffic was amazing, and I only got there 7 minutes late, which was a relief.



Mind you I had to have two of those fancy French Moritz's today since I only had one sandwhich. Gutted. having to eat ice cream, what a chore.



Hey people... you know how there is a comments button? Yeah the thing in orange writing with underline. Well if you click it, you can write a comment. Hehe and SUBTLE is my middle name!



Oh that's right! The whole point of the post. I got transcribed today at work. Since we are a approved lab, we must minimize our transcription errors. For instance today I got transcribed for not writing a dilution factor for some water I was testing. What's funny is that I don't really care about it. But it can be a source of contention, because it is the other lab staff who in fact do the transcribing. So as you can all imagine, an innocent transcriber can become the subject of backlash transcription, and things can get pretty nasty. I was told about an incident where one of the staff (let's call them lab technician #1) transcribed another (let's call them lab technician #2) for a seemingly innocent mistake. Lab technician #2 then transcribed lab technician #1 into next century for various different mistakes. Since then lab technician #1 has not transcribed lab technician #2. I wonder if my apathy will have the same effect?

Went for a bit of a tour of the factory today. Saw some bits I hadn't seen as yet. It was pretty weord, because I walked into a couple of the freezers. In one of them, my nose started to feel funny and I could feel moisture in it freezing which was real weord. I asked how cold it was and was told -40. Wowsers. The people who work in there are only in for 15 minutes and then get a half hour break from work in the freezer. It was so cold that when I went outside, the breeze felt like a tropical one.



Well that's all that was really that interesting. Oh that's right. I had a choc bar, and a Moritz (that fancy weord named caramel one). I think it might be "Glace avec un nom français drôle.". Try translating that Translator.





Well I better be off with me and do some Greek study.

My focus is all crocused. Crocus Focus



Thus I will never ever be able to do a post tonight. And I will never ever ever do a post tonight.

Alana's 21st was very very cool. She had organised a barn out Karaka way, and we all had to dress up in clothes from the 1920's to 1960's. Everyone got into the dress part..or should I say everyone save Dan. hehe. Well me and Jono went shopping for our clothes togetehr. The original plan was to get suits and be 1920's gansters, but there was difficulty getting jackets that allowed Jono's muscular shoulders movement, so we gave up on that idea. So in the end we decided to get corduroys. I picked up a pair of trousers for $2. They are brown and are real wide at the bottom. Look really funny. Jono also got a pair (a similar colour). We then got a sort of tight (and I mean ta height) corduroy dinner jackety thing for Jono which was a tad (read a lot) to small. Then I got a corduroy jacket and we finished our purchases off by getting to orange (read LOUD orange) shirts which went underneath the jackets. We decided we must have been visionary 60's people.



Anyway this got me thinking. I realised that I could get clothes for very little. If you're willing to go second hand, and spend a bit of time, you can find clothes that are really nice, and most of us wouldn't even know they were second hand. No I realise the corduroys were obviously old (I will still wear them), but there were heaps of other clothes that weren't like that. I mean one shop we went to had every item of clothing for $2. Well I may now shop for my clothes at Save Mart. Hehe, and nobody mock me about it, because I'm trying to be a good steward!

Yay for the weekend! Not only that, but it's Alana's 21st! Awesome stuff. Should be good.



Louise and me have just finished watching "A Knight's Tale". It's one of our favourite movies and we watch it regularly. Hehe, we even know most of the dialogue, and facial expressions. Chaucer is soo soo funny.



This morning I got to work early, and read the passage about Dinah and Shechem. The version I was reading it in translated what took place as 'Schechem violated Dinah." The CEV has the word rape. It was a bit unclear as to what actually took place, because later on Shechem is described as "he was honored above all the house of his father." That tends to indicate that either the rest of his family were a bunch of scoundrels or there is more to this than the initial reading throws up. I thought that perhaps it was an example of fornication where the two parties were consenting. Which is judged to be bad anyway by God. It was seen as a humiliation to not be a virgin when one got married. When I looked at the Hebrew dictionary that came with E Sword, the Hebrew word that has been used as rape or defile had various meanings, meaning it was still possible for my idea about this to be correct. If this were true (and I'm not saying it is, it was just a suggestion) then the fact that we wanted to marry her makes him a bit better. Instead of just getting what he wanted, and then sneaking away and buttering off, he proposed commitment. Not only that, but we see in verse 3 that his heart cleaved to her. This suggests not mere lust, but a constant continued affection. He also offers any price for a dowry, as a way of seeking ammends. Interesting. A difficult passage at any rate, and I'm still not sure what to make of it. But God had everything under control, and he did not want Israel to join into a pagan family, so he destroyed them. Even that's confusing. It seems that the writer looks down on Simeon and Levi for their deceit and murder of Shechem's whanau. They justify their murders by saying that Shechem shouldn't have treated their sister like a prostitute. What really seems to make their action evil, is the use of a sign of the covenant of grace to deceive the men and later kill them. There is much more I wish to look at in this passage, but I share just a few of my thoughts about it here with you.



Better catch some zzzzzzzzzzz's.