The archivist thought one of the staff would make a good editor for Presbytery News. The person is question is keen. If we can get the approval from the relevant people then we can build up a new team to ensure we do not lose this news service.

A Subaru was seem prowling around bearing Dave from Invercargill. He had come to ‘n Edwin for the day to attend a news group gathering in the evening. He did not stay overnight as I had been expecting. Instead he returned to Invercargill straight after the meeting. He delivered to me a teapot set that my mother had promised. I’m still making loose-leaf tea (proper tea!), now I have to use a tea strainer to avoid tea leaves in my cup. I have forgotten once so far and ended up with a cup of tea leaves. One advantage is that I can get two cups of tea from one serving.

I forgot to give Dave the stamps that are sitting on my desk. They will wait until next time he visits. He promises that he will help us shift at the end of the year if he is available, and will take some time off to help. I don’t think we want to spend another winter in this house, even though it has been milder than last years. How do I want to organise flat hunting this time. I would still like to stay in the Gardens so I am close to Opoho Church as this forms an important part of my activities.

I watched the second dvd in Master and Commander: the far side of the world. I can return that on Monday.

Keith has gone to a roleplaying session. Before he left he gave me the Earthdawn rulebook and suggested that I might like to read it. He is a part of an Earthdawn group that meets on Friday nights. They are going to start a new adventure and he suggests that I might like to join. I have read the background in the rulebook and I like the scenario (after an age of darkness adventurers are beginning to rebuild the known world). Reading the history of the known world I wonder if anyone has thought about doing a campaign in ‘Earthdusk’, just before the predations of the Scourge brought around the collaspe of the known world?

I’m reading thought the character generation material and deciding what kind of character I would like to play first. An orkish scout perhaps…

Been down to the church and made sure that it was vacuumed before tomorrow’s service, as I am on cleaning duty for the next few weeks.

I did the Fellowship of the LiveJournal quiz. I’ve tested it several times and get the same results. It’s up to dryad Baggins to destroy the Ring of Power (can she do the Elijah Wood roadkill in the headlights look?) Fortunately she will be aided by wise council of Zargoff the Grey. Dave provides the hot elvish action (so there!) and the furry turtle is the comic relief (the only non-New Zealander in this fellowship). Tragically Harry is seduced by the ring and goes hedgehog up at the end of the first volume. He is reassured before his death that at the return of the king Jumpgate will save the White City Rangers from being defeated by ORC United.

I’ll wait for the movie, thanks!

Two comics from Bag End this week:

Ghostbusters: I am liking this comic. Comic dialogue and story! Recommended.

Starjammers: still swashbuckling fun. The story is a bit slow for five episodes. Half the regular crew of the Starjammer have yet to be seen. Where is Corsair? Characters seem to be behaving inconsistently with continuity. Is the writer to blame for this?

Life, the preview of what gets recorded in a blog

Joe has pointed out to me that in Dave’s Fellowship of the LJ I am the ‘Hot Elf’!

Still the prettiest!

Expecting signs of a prowling Subaru on Friday.

We got too many chips on Friday night. I had ordered wedges and made it an extra large order. The girl miss-heard me and gave me chips. I remembered we had put them in the fridge and had them for lunch on Sunday with a pie before I went out to watch the shamans. Joe reminded me that they were there.

The assistant archivist has returned from study leave in Europe. He’s looking tanned, his hair shaved to a No. 1, and sporting three earrings. I got a shock when I first saw him. The archives will have to send him on another study leave next year so he doesn’t lose that tan.

I know that Felicity is back in the country. She rings me at the wrong times to find me at home.

I have received news about the interview that we had last week for nomination committee. The applicant decided he did not sense a call to Opoho from us. That’s fine because we did not sense a call to Opoho from him. Everyone’s happy. Back to square one. Let’s see if we can manage the financial burden of calling a full-time minister for next year. I also see that the issue of the Presbyterian church in North East Valley has come up in the agenda of next month’s Presbytery. There is a suggestion of a partnership with Opoho. I don’t want to see that happen unless we can extricate ourselves from the burden of having anything to do with their buildings which are in a hazardous state.

Power bill paid. Prices have gone up, which is a bit of a sting. I went to Saint James the Hairdresser for a haircut. The men’s hairdresser has met the previous accomplement of this household. He thinks that the clash of different personalities would be like an episode of Black Books. Despite the changing of the guard, it hasn’t really changed much.

TV watching this week so far includes Fight Club, which I hadn’t seen before. The first half was entertainingly black-humoured and I laughed all the way through it. The second half was weirder with Tyler Durden proving to be a personality disorder in Edward Norton’s narrator’s head. We debated whether they survived the crashing buildings at the end of the movie. I argued that there is no way of knowing for certain – Schrodinger’s Ending.

Brad Pitt can still make full frontal nudity seem dull.

The other thing I watched, which I enjoyed, was Child of the Future, hosted by Lord Professor Robert Winston. The documentary series is an instalment in a BBC project that will cover the first twenty years of a group of millennial babies. (Babies born in January 2000 if you’re a pedant.) I was interested to see that one child who was incubated soon after birth was confident visiting an emergency ward construct when other two-year olds who had not had that trauma were fearful of the experience. I know that I was incubated after birth, I wonder if would have had the same confidence? Two other examples showed children coping (or not) with unhappy homelives and anxiety in the first two years of their lives.

I went about the living area of the house and the clear space in my bedroom with the vacuum cleaner. It looks cleaner for it.

Only one comic this week: the third issue of The Escapist. It includes a horror story from the eve of the Comics code.

Lots of running around at church today. I was on door duty, and singing with the music group before the service. It did not give me time to talk to Graeme. He told me what he wanted prayers for while the service was underway. Eventually I had to silence him because others were listening to what the preacher was saying.

In the afternoon I went to the museum to see a group of Korean shamans performing. It was a curious affair conducted all in Korean language, colourful and noisy. If religion can be theatre, then this was pantomime.

The shamans quickly changed between gods identified by customes that could be easily donned and doffed – ragbag gods. We saw a shaman stand on sharpened blades. Many in the audience cringed. I found my way to my calm space as I watched the man stand on the knives. He ran the knives on his arms, tongue and mouth. I noticed that it was done with care that he did not accidently cut himself. Even the way he stood on the blades meant that he spread the weight on the soles of his feet carefully.

In the final ritual of the demonstration the audience was invited into the sacred space before the altar and clad in shamans’ robes. We became ourselves the ragbag gods. I found out that even shamans can be impressed by a fast threestep. My time that I spent attempting to learn folk dancing has not gone to waste.

Percussionist Songs

Joe’s haircut is still scaring people who have difficulty coping with life.

Keith has sent me an email about a Dungeons and Dragons Roleplaying session that is beginning on Thursdays. Unfortunately for me this clashes with choir practice for the next three weeks. Hopefully there will be a place for me when I’m available on the nineteenth of August.

Music practice for church in the morning, different to choir practice as it is for tomorrow morning. Unfortunately there too I am on door duty, so I will juggling things if I can do both at once.

In the afternoon I went to a concert at Marama Hall in the university. It was percussionist music. I was expecting big music, similar to Gareth Farr. Instead it was very focused: three small ensembles of instruments played by one man. One of these was a DADA sonnet. I kept on thinking that I should be able to parse this. The musician was an English-speaking Netherlander and I kept thinking that all the incomprehensible bits should fall into place in another language. I think that was the required effect. The musical saw was pretty neat, although it did put me to sleep.

There is another translation relay coming up. In preparation I have started listing words from the Indo-European index at the American Heritage Dictionary site into Vayaunnas, one of the languages I hope to use for translating.

The young man who was at church on Sunday turned up at choir practice last night. I am under strict instructions not to fighten him just yet. Good base voice too. He comes from Wyndham in Southland so there is a good chance that he is a distant relative. I will not investigate that! Just as I recognised him he recognised me. I told him that I work in the Presbyterian Archives and he placed where he knew me from.

I spent about an hour at home after that. Keith had made tea and I made myself a cup of tea. I visited Harry for a games night, arriving at nine o’clock. We played chez Dork and chez Geek for a couple of hours before we all went chez home. Enough running around for one evening. If there is a games evening from now on I think that I will decline and let the others play earlier in the evening.

I have watched Master and Commander: The far side of the world. It’s bit of a sleeper of a movie. Lots of historical detail and slightly open-ended. Although it is only loosely based on the books I think it is a movie for the fans of the series. Lots of lovely music.

One person on my friends list, a celtic warrior, has changed his journal account. He is a person with sharp edges whom I encounter occasionally. I checked his new page and discovered that he thought this journal was still worth linking to. I am complimented by that.

There was a young man at church on Sunday. When I asked around I found out that he was a resident of Knox who had discovered Opoho Church while he was out running. He made the point in coming on Sunday and even stayed for the meeting about church buildings. Some people are excited in having a new person turn up for a change.

One of the staff at the archives was in late today. She was waiting for her new washing machine to arrive. They came down her drive and knocked on her door. She was in the kitchen listening to the radio and did not hear them knock. They went away again and will not deliver it now until tomorrow. She is having problems that her house in central Dunedin is slowly being hemmed in by modern student flats each holding about eight residents. The landlady next door wants to flatten the garden behind the house and put more flats in there.

I talked to one person at church about what flats he will have available next year. Unfortunately the most suitable, a three-bedroom house is out in Mornington on Meadow Street behind the Countdown supermarket. I’m not sure I want to move that far from Opoho church.

New locks have been put on the doors at Opoho Church to make it more secure. New keys to allow access have been distributed to members who use it regularly.

The nominations committee is considering making a call. There is a major concern that calling a full-time minister will put the church seriously in debt. We no longer have the members to support it. It was a pleasure to linger with people after the meeting, and enjoy tea and biscuits. Since the membership of our flat has changed I find I miss the company of people with whom I share religious experience.

As I will not be doing any work for Griffler Enterprises I am considering mothballing Bagend and swapping it with Endeavour, my linux box, which sits in the spare room. I will get Joe to move my email onto one of the network boxen so I can access from either terminal if needs must. I would like to be in a position to upgrade Endeavour by the end of the year. That would be nice.

One of the residents parked in the archives parking space in such a way that its wheels overlapped two parking spaces. The archivist decided not to risk a scratch using the second park. Instead she hemmed it in by parking her car directly behind it. One of our volunteers had brought his car in from Mosgiel and he used the empty park. Before nones I saw one resident trying steer his car back and forth so he could squeeze out through the gap left by the two archives cars. Before he risked the other two cars the archivist had been notified and arrived to move her car to let him out.

Joe has downloaded the pilot for Stargate: Atlantis and we have watched it. I found it amusing enough. I think the gothic alien vampires are too twee to remain major villains of the series (let’s face it – it’s been done!) I had fun trying to identify the flags wore by the stargate personnel: Scottish (rather than UK military – admittedly the guy was a medic); American, Canadian, Japanese, and a few others that I didn’t find immediately obvious. For now they are overlooking the fact that aliens don’t speak English, including the Ancients that left Earth a million years ago.

Tournament

I went with Keith to the Otago University Roleplaying Society quarterly tournament. I played in three of four sessions: a module set in a Wild West scenario where magic works; a band of Japanese soldiers in World War II; and a character from an ad lib commedia del arte play. I need to work on my ability to roleplay and act. In the two consecutive roleplaying weekends that I have been to I proved to be very rusty.

Saturday night was involved in a Grand Strategy game as teams played the roles of corporations colonising a solar system on the verge of interstellar travel.

Sunday morning I decided to go to church instead for a liturgic recharge. I was still tired and napped during the sermon. Graeme in good spirits. There was a congregational meeting after church to discuss what people wanted in developing the buildings. Inconclusive and butt-numbing. What the committee wanted was ideas for direction. This week I’m attending an interview for the nominations committee, parish council, and hopefully getting to winter choir practices. I shall be busy!

No Majellan this week, which proved to be just as well. There is a chance of a games evening later this week. Keith is preparing to join one of the Society’s campaigns.

A genius with access to unstable chemicals!

The university semester has begun. After the exam period one regular has returned to the gym. He’s happy with how his exam went. Back to the slow process of improvement at the gym.

We watched Van Helsing last night. A lot better than I was expecting. The gothic laughs started from the outset of the movie and carried through: Dracula, Frankenstein and the Werewolf together again. A good cast made much of the corny horror material.

A raw throat that is not responding to cups of my favorite blackcurrent cordial; sneezing and mucus. Looks like I’m coming down with a cold!

What’s more my hairline is receding further.

These last two paragraphs are not related symptons.