Christmas, silent nights, and roadtrip!

Hope you all had a merry Christmas spent with family and friends! This past week I've been working night shifts starting last Saturday night so at the moment I'm kinda disoriented as to what day it is and whether I should be awake or sleeping...not unlike some of the patients on the wards!

Christmas Eve we had a special carols service at church. We sang 10 carols with bible readings and lessons in between each one and a short message at the end. I'm really really happy with how the music team did with the 10 carols considering we had our first and final rehearsal that same afternoon! Good job team - thanks to God for your gifts!

Didn't make it to Christmas Day service cos was too zonked out (that's a cool word!), but all in all it's been a good week of nights. With only 2 wards to cover during this time of year, I've averaged 4-5 hours of good uninterrupted sleep each night! How's that - literally paid to sleep! But if I had it my way, I'd rather pay NOT to have worked over this past week...but what to do?!

Anyhow, the offset is that my super nice medical admin person gave me next week off as compensation and so I'm heading down to Melbourne early tomorrow morning at 6am (yup - knocking off work a bit early courtesy of the cool resident who will cover me!)! Going down with some church friends to meet up with some other church friends already there. So we'll spend NYE down there and then head off to do the Great Ocean Rd! Should be exciting!

...and maybe for more reasons than one... =P

And that's a wrap for 2006 - seeya all in the new year!

Random collection of...stuff!

A random collection of stuff I've done in the last 10 days or so:

• Hanging out with church friends! Has been awesome staying back at church for dinner, and seeing Casino Royale last Tues. Great to meet some newcomers too! Have really enjoyed getting to know ppl better!

• Bike riding in the rain with a friend! Went for a ride to Port Botany hoping to do a bit of plane watching. Instead, I stacked it on the way there, the rain got quite heavy so we had to hide under a bridge from where we couldn't see any planes, and my friend punctured both her bike tyres! Maybe that wasn't the best day to go, but it was fun anyway!

• Have been quite busy with music at church. Songlead at church for the first time last Sunday since I really can't remember when...quite enjoyed it actually! This Sunday's Christmas Eve service is going to be HUGE for the music team as we'll be singing 10 Christmas carols with short sermons/lessons interspersed between them. If you like carols, come along to St Mark's this Sunday 5pm!
  

• Discovered Jimmy Eats World, another cool band Jon discovered a while ago that I found in his CD collection! Awesome songs include: For Me This is Heaven, Futures, Work, and Night Drive.
  

• On a Gilmore Girls watching spree! Powered through the 2nd season on DVD and just started the 3rd season! Despite what you may think from the title, this isn't a series just for chicks! The witty dialogue and relationships are refreshing and keep me coming back for more! Makes me wonder if I'd ever wanna live in a small country town...
  

• Still reading Dan Brown's Deception Point - highly recommended! Trying to stick to my read-thru-the-Bible-in-a-year reading plan but slightly behind. Have just read Titus - lotsa pearls in there!
  

• Lastly, work - did a week of evenings last week - not too bad! Loved having the daytime free and sleeping in! This week did geris! I actually really enjoyed it despite it being a busy week! I think I really love the multidisciplinary aspect of it! Next week doing a week of surgical nights 11pm-8.30am from Sat night till Sat morning.
  

So overall an amazing past fortnight really! I think in the last month or so I've really felt like work has stopped being all consuming energy sapping part of my life and that things have turned around! Whether I've felt tired or not I've thrown myself into doing different things, going out, doing crazy things! And I've loved every second! Bring it on!

'This could be the very minute I'm aware I'm alive...'

If it's one thing I love, it has to be spontaneity! And what could be more spontaneous than deciding to go bike riding with a friend at 1am in the morning after Carols last Saturday night!

Maybe it was the caffeine... maybe it was because I was still glowing after an awesome Carols event... maybe it was because I thought 'what the heck, why not?!'

So off we went, stopping by the Mobil first to pump some air in our tyres. I was a bit wobbly still, having not ridden a bike since I can't really remember when. The air pump hose wasn't attached to the pump so we had to ask the kwik-e-mart guy for the hose. At first he refused, perhaps thinking what? That we were gonna run off with his hose??! Eventually some pleading and begging melted his resolve and soon we were on our way with pumped up tyres!

It was a nice ride under a full moon in warm weather and a cool breeze streaming in our faces. We reached the Centennial Park gates to find the main gates locked but we were able to slip in through the pedestrian gates. Don't know why, but it kinda felt like we weren't supposed to be in there. I mean, who goes bike riding at 1am in the morning in Centennial park?!

Without street lights and with the trees obscuring the moonlight, we had to rely on our makeshift bike headlamp - a camping style headlight strapped to the front of my bike - to guide us.

Then it was without warning that my friend suddenly said "Look! Lights! Ranger's coming! Let's get off the road!" Sure enough a jeep was approaching with flashing siren lights. So we kinda tried to go stealth, switching off our lights and heading over to the pedestrian walkway and the cover of some trees.

It was too late.

We were spotted!

The ranger called us over and we thought we had had it! We were gonna get kicked out of the park. Or maybe even fined!

Actually, the ranger was really nice and just wanted to make sure we were ok. He had spotted a group of 4 youths lingering around near one of the gates and just wanted to warn us to stay away from them.

Somewhat relieved but slightly alarmed as well, we thanked him and headed on our way.

We cycled uphill towards the Woollahra gates and turned right to follow a road towards where they have the moonlight cinema. Then we enjoyed a long downhill run back down to the main circuit! Ah...hadn't done that in a while! And certainly not at what was now 2am in the morning!!!

What can I say...it felt good to be alive! So good, I was ready to do it all over again the very next night... =P

Carols by Candlelight 2006!

Wow! What an awesome week of annual leave and to top it off, an awesome weekend!!! Spent the rest of last week hanging out with my cuz mostly, playing golf, watching Open Season, and of course heaps of DVDs!

Then our church put on its second ever Carols by Candlelight on Sat night! Having missed last year's one cos of Gradball and having only seen photos of it, I wasn't quite sure what to expect but what a night it was!

We arrived just after lunch to help set up and to do a last minute run through rehearsal. Randwick Council had kindly provided a bigger stage and a marquee this year so we didn't have to fry in the hot arvo sun!

After sound checks and what not, we ran through the program. The drama team were running through their first and last rehearsal for the skit, which was rather frantic but it came together and the props were outstanding!!! Go the dual function outback dunny/ATM machine and the rusty holden ute!!!

Jon and I did a squishy run to 7/11 to recharge before the evening's program got underway! Around 5pm people stated rocking up and we had the BBQ, jumping castle, and kids games going! At 7pm some kids from Malabar Public did a few musical items as well as some dancing girls from some private dancing school. Then it was time for the carols and skits!

The program was much the same as last year but bigger and better! This year we had the NTE team on stage for a Hi-5 style kids song! We had santa who preached the gospel! It was all happening man and if you missed out this year you'll have to come back next year!!!

I think I spotted some angels!

There were apparently more people than last year and a real feel of community spirit! From what I hear there were great gospel conversations and God was really working in Malabar! Bring on Carols 2007!!!

A world away from Sydney...

...and yet still in Sydney! The place I'm talking about is the Northern beaches, where my cousin and I took a spontaneous leisurely day trip today, the start of my 3rd week of annual leave!

Having just been up at Collaroy for houseparty, I thought it'd be nice to wander further up north and discover some of Sydney's hidden pearls! We hopped in the car and after listening to Snow Patrol's Eyes Open album once through, we had reached Collaroy!

We got out and stretched our legs before taking a walk to the hill at the southern end. This is the view we saw!

Next we headed up to Palm Beach, the hideaway of the rich and famous! By now the sun had come out and it was a glorious day to be outside! We grabbed some fish and chips from this cool general store that had heaps of Coca-cola memorabilia (Dr J you would've loved it!) and sat near the beach enjoying the sun! After we'd had way too much to eat, we fed the rest to the local ducks who showed their gratitude by doing their business almost on our slippers! Thanks alot!

After lunch we headed to Barronjoey lighthouse, only accessible by a short stroll on the beach and then a steep rugged walking track to the summit of Barronjoey headland. The walk was tough but soooooo worth it cos this is the view we had from the top!

Headed back down and stopped at Avalon beach for icecream before heading home! Felt like we had spent the day in some central coast beach side town but how lucky we are to have such wonders on our doorstep...

Evening church HP!

Had an awesome weekend away at our annual evening church houseparty! We went to Collaroy Conference Centre up on the northern beaches on Friday night. I went with my pastor to lug all the music gear along.

We were the second people to arrive! Go figure! Set up all the gear and before we knew it, most people had come and we had our first talk from Dave, the speaker for the weekend. He spoke on Romans 8 and what it means to live as someone set free from sin to live for Christ. Afterwards we stayed up late playing Jenga, Take 2, and card games!

Saturday I woke up early and went for walk with Di and Sus to beach. It wasn't the best weather but it was so refreshing to be up early and enjoying the sight, smell and sounds of the beach. We made it back in time for brekky and just before the gathering clouds poured rain. After brekky we had bible study, talk, then free time. Despite thinking that we'd be stuck indoors, God swept away the clouds and provided with sun even for the 3 hours we had off!!! We went outside and played tennis, basketball, and baseball! And no sooner had we gone back indoors, it started raining again!!! Sat night was compulsory fun with a trivia/awards night and some funny games (guess what the game was in the photo!) This was followed by more fun playing Articulate, five hundred and other games into the early hours of the morning!

Sunday we had bible study and talk before packing up and heading back for 5pm church.

All in all a relaxing fun weekend and according to Andrew - the best houseparty ever!