i don't like those lids they put on take-away hot drinks. they're probably very good for safety and things like that, but they just make the hot drink experience that little bit more tedious. for one, sometimes they're tricky to take off without spilling something anyway. and even more annoying is how some of the froth on the top (by far the best bit of any good hot chocolate) always gets stuck to it. and that can be tricky to get to because sometimes the insides of the lids have 3d print of some sort on them, and the uneven surface makes the runaway froth tricky to pick up with a spoon. that's assuming, of course, that you actually get a spoon, as opposed to those annoying flat things that are apparently called 'stirrers'. as if they're good for anything. they just had a million left-over white straws and squashed them in the middle and put them in front of the counter so people would think they're useful. anyway. not important.

one of my teachers is an absolute goose (and by that i mean silly, but good silly), and that is such a comforting thing. he's not old, but he's older than me (obviously), and i guess it's just nice to see that even when you do get a bit older and do grow up a bit in some ways and do get some sort of job or career or lifestyle or whatever, that you can still be a goose.

made a friend on the train today. it makes me so angry that some people seem to go through life never having being loved. i feel so lucky to have a family and friends that care about me. i don't think this lady had ever felt cared about. just the way she was talking, what she was saying...even the way she held herself, all timid and frightened like some scared and lonely puppy who's been scolded so many times that they just shrink everytime they see somebody coming for fear they'll get hurt and disprespected again. how the heck can we (as in people....me included) be so cruel and so damn selfish.

"can't get started...chemical heart...everytime i get started...you pull me apart" - grinspoon

letter writing is underrated. how much does everybody love getting mail, but little does anybody ever write somebody a proper, paper letter. i'm so included in that - i love getting mail but i'm usually not bothered to write anything myself, which is very silly. with all this email and mobile phone and blog business it's not surprising that letters (and maybe handwriting in general...although letters don't have to be handwritten) are less common. and it's understandable in a way - for the most part, emails are much more convinient. they're quicker, can be replied to on the spot, can be cut and pasted till your keyboard shortcuts are content, and typing is a lot easier. at least i think so. but although it's pretty amazing that what somebody is writing in brazil is in a few minutes electronically transmitted to sweden, i think there's something so much cooler in the fact that for all it's technological advances, society still relys on people on bikes to manually deliver letters and postcards and bank statements and christmas cards from one place to another. there's something honest and kind of cute in that. people still need other people. that's a comforting thing.
 
was thinking about all that as, for a change, i was writing a letter tonight. a friend has gone to the army for a couple of months and i think he's missing...well...life, really. i mean i'm sure he'll learn stuff and benefit from the experience, but horribly early mornings, constantly being shouted at, and having no freedom of expression in how you act or what you wear is hardly a cup of tea. or a walk in the park. or a stroll beside the river. or a relaxing snooze in a hammock. or anything else. not that it should be - i think that's kind of the point, but i just mean he's probably finding it quite challenging. i think i'd cry if i had people yelling at me all day long. i'd take it all so personally and start feeling worthless. anyway - this friend's mum gave me his address so i could write to him. so i did. and the address - my goodness me. writing the address on the envelope is by far a highlight of any letter-writing experience, at least i think so. but this address deserves an envelope all to itself....um...oh hang on...it does have an envelope all to itself. that didn't work. basically it's a mother of an address. nine lines long. just plain crazy. another thing with writing letters is not knowing when to stop. or knowing when you want to stop, but feeling as though you ought to write a bit more or less than that. like when you've written page, and have gone over to the next page, and written just too much for it to be 'a little extra', but not quite enough to make the whole second page worthwhile. and you can't take back what you've already written, but you don't really have much else to say without sounding like you don't have much else to say, but having about half a page worth of writing and ending it there almost seems a little lazy. i mean you got that far down the page, you may as well finish it off. and the person might read it and go, 'oh...they couldn't even be bothered to finish the page...they obviously don't want to talk to me...how rude'. on the flip side to that, sometimes you've just got sooo much you want to say, and as you're writing down one thing another thing is entering your mind, and then it has this domino effect and the ideas and thoughts and questions and observations and ponderings and explanations all increase at this exponential rate and pretty soon you've filled about six pages with...stuff. and that's all well and good, and the person receiving the letter will no doubt be impressed at your commitment to the penship, even if the stuff you've written is either amazingly boring or absolute bollocks. but before you can send it and impress your friend, you do the read-over. the moment before the read-over always makes me a little nervous. and this isn't restricted to letters - this is with anything that you've written a lot in, blogs included. i get nervous because i wonder what ridiculous things i've come out with. or because i know i've probably expressed something in a way that's true enough to be right but vague enough to potentially sound dodgy. or because there's the possibility of me getting to the end of the read-over and deciding to throw out the whole thing and start from scratch and so have wasted a whole lot of time. and that's where handwritten stuff will differ from typed - it's easy to delete things in an email or on a blog (although, i edit blogs only as little as possible before i publish them...so not much changes throughout the thought-to-screen process...you can be assured it's quite genuine...hence the silly things that sometimes end up on here), but getting rid of something that's handwritten often involves a sacrifice. do you sacrifice half a page of writing for one sentence? do you sacrifice a letter looking neat so you can correct one word? oh, the dramas. 
 
speaking of the army...which i think i was, before i went off on a tangent about the intruiging challenges  involved in writing a letter....a while ago i met a guy in the army at the train station. i think i blogged about it. anyway, was with a friend at the shops today and i thought i saw him. but i wasn't sure, and was curious, so we did the obligatory walk-around-again-in-a-really-wide-circle-so-you-can-look-at-someone-without-them-noticing ritual so i could satisfy my curiousity. and i decided it was him afterall. and that was that, and we continued with our shopping. but it did make me realise how easy it is to spy on people. especially somewhere like a shopping center. lots of people around, lots of movement, lots of potential distractions and escape routes. spying is a lot of fun so long as it's for innocent purposes.
 
i love op shops. they never fail to be interesting places. normal shops can be great, but they're kinda predictable. op shops always have surprises. and they always have interesting people. and they often have creaky floors and ugly carpet and a strange smell that makes me think of an old person's apartment. they're often quiet too. that's a downside in my opinion - i like shopping to a soundtrack. i like doing most things to a soundtrack. makes me feel like i'm in a movie. plus you can sing along. and tap your foot. or even dance if you're feeling uninhibited. but op shops usually either have no sound system, or a really dodgy one that's playing christian or otherwise 'nice' music from the early 1990's, usually at an annoying level that's loud enough to be audible but soft enough to be unclear and constantly obstructed by other sounds. an-noy-ing. but i still love op shops. they've always got a bit of a school-fete thing going on, partly due to the mixed nature of the items for sale, but mostly just coz it's all so damn cheap. you feel like a primary school kid, going up to the counter with your stuff and giving a lovely old lady $1.50 for the lot. what a beautiful thing.

my memory is an unreliable as a...as an unreliable memory. and damn clichès. clichès suck, man. they take perfectly beautiful things and decide for everybody that they're garbage. and why can't we hear smiles over the phone?
 
"i'm a good kisser...and you're a fast learner...and that kinda thing could float us for a pretty long time" - ani difranco. cute lyric that i don't quite understand.

i have a love/hate relationship with my hips. see, on one hand, they're the best. they keep my jeans (and any other lower-half-of-the-body attire) from falling down without having to wear a belt. they give you something to put your hands on when you want to look chissed.  and they're heaps useful for carrying things. chairs, amps, boxes, laundry baskets, 2yr olds...hips make holding all those things a whole lot more convinient. but on the other hand, they're just...annoying. ah well. i'm sure i'll get over it.

had my first ever live football game experience, finally. it was only a minor game but we had a great time. the players who weren't playing at that moment would be running up and down the side of the field, alternating between walking, jogging and sprinting. it's obviously to keep warm, and they wear these long jackets for the same purpose, but they just looked like a pack of nervous, stocky mafia boys on the run. was quite funny.

went with soul survivor to this youth group event a few weeks ago. one of those nights i wasn't really looking forward to, but that god used to wake me up a bit. miracles are funny things. we all talk about how amazing god is and how much he's done and blah blah blah...yet we so often don't seem to expect him to show his amazingness in the miraculous ways that the bible quite clearly talks about. a bit silly. maybe we get so caught up in what we think is absolute or certain or existent, somehow reasoning that what's possible is only what we humans can achieve, and forget that this limited world we live in can't limit god, that nothing can. maybe this is one situation where it's better to have our heads in the clouds, rather than clouding our heads with what's here in front of us. maybe we should let go of all 'stuff', stop depending on tangible things and realise that there is no spoon...well, there is...but the fact is that a stainless steel kitchen utensil has got nothing on god. sounds silly, and it probably is, but i think maybe we do tend to attach power and stability to things that seemingly might have power or stability...but in the broad scheme of things are really nothing. use the example of sims. in a game like simtown, for example, it would be silly for the sims to think that they knew everything (assuming of course that they think at all, which they don't, but they do for the analogy). they could strut around thinking to themselves, 'i can do this. i know how this town works. i know where my house is. i know what happens here'. but the fact is that the person in control of the game is, obviously, in control of the game. at any time they could change something or move something or whatever. maybe we get too complacent in our surroundings. we think we know how it all works, how it happens, how we function within it. but then - bam - god can do something crazy that goes against every preconception, every science textbook. like make a donkey speak. that's one of the points in the bible i sooo wish i was there for.  how random. i'm not sure where i was going with all this. um. how embarrassing. um...what i meant to say was that people got instantly healed that night at the youth thing. how cool. i was happy, and i think that made god happy. but i was also surprised, and i think maybe god wondered why.

i led on a camp up on the central coast in the holidays. interesting mix of people, which is ultimately always a good thing i think. there was a bit of an olympic theme throughout the week, so there was lots of running around and sports and challenges and wide games and all that. sooo not my thing. at least i didn't think so, but i actually had a lot of fun. lots of disgusting food-related things, the highlight of which was probably having minestrone soup poured all over my hair and down my back. yum yum. it was a good week for humility. you couldn't survive unless you were willing to make a complete wally of yourself in front of everyone, which i did, on numerous occasions. went to my first ever toga party, which i'm somehow guessing was a little tamer than the ones advertised at uni. the big-scale army game we played out in the bush was mad fun; on one hand you'd all be really silly and laughing, but on the other hand you'd be really serious about strategising and really concerned about guarding your base. went iceskating for the first time in years, good fun except for the nasty blister which is still on the mend. but the best part of the week was probably getting to know everybody. it was a quite a varied group of people, both campers and leaders, and i went only knowing one of them, but i'm really really glad i got to meet everyone there. the girls in my group were terrific; 14/15yr olds who were crazy and funny and interested in boys (some of which were on the camp as well, which made for some interesting conversation). they were really great girls. sort of the 'popular' crowd but not clique-y or snobby or up themselves. just cool. just beautiful. i just wish there had been more time to hang out with them...just talk to them without having to do anything else. still, was a good week all in all.

came home from camp and a few hours later was on the road to our nation's capitol. or is it capital? who knows. my sister and her new husband had come up to sydney while i was away and i went back down with them to hang out for a few days. and how splendid those few days were. we didn't do a lot, but just being down there was enough. it made me realise how much i'd been missing them. i must have looked through the wedding photos at least10 times; was kinda cool to be able relive all that and actually ask them about how they found the day, as we didn't really get to talk much when it was all happening. caught a train back up to sydney which was actually a really nice journey. read a lot, slept a lot, daydreamed a lot. i think i live in my daydreams a bit. maybe that's ok in some ways, but like lots of things, it's dangerous in excess so i should be careful...otherwise i'll just be wasting my days away in an unreal reality and forget to get on with life because i'm so busy daydreaming about it.

there's more to say. but i guess there always will be.

"she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever" - jeff buckley. what a tragic but totally cool way of saying something.