Virtually Paul

Well, I made it to today in one piece. The last two weeks have seen me slogging through the bulk of my semester’s work for college as well as preaching my first real sermon in the morning service at my church. (I did a morning service ’sermon’ over summer but that was before I went to Ridley and found out what I was actually meant to be doing.)

I rearranged my work commitments to get all of that out of the way, so Monday and Tuesday (yes, the Melbourne Cup Day holiday), saw me dragging myself out to the office to get some odd jobs done with the server. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have the privilege of doing this kind of stuff during daylight hours. You can’t reboot a server at 15 minute intervals while people are using it. They tend to get annoyed with you. So, in the sense that I didn’t have to give up a Saturday or a weeknight to get the work done, I generally consider it a win. Off-topic.

Today, my first real day off, feels like it has been totally wasted. I’ve spent it doing the varied administrative tasks of life. After a load of washing was on the line, having no car to zoom around in, I grabbed the green bags and walked up to the major suburban shopping precinct that isn’t that far from my place. I’ve never really done shopping on an outdoor strip of shops before. I really liked the community atmosphere to the place though. It ended up being a bit of a shopping spree.

At one stage, I walked out of a shop having just made a purchase. My unfortunate wallet, which has a hole in the coin pouch bit, caused me to drop a 20c piece, which rolled back into the base of some kind of display stand in the open front of the shop. I was slightly grumpy because I hadn’t had lunch yet, so I watched it roll away and decided I couldn’t be bothered with it. Behind me, I heard a frustrated mum yelling as her little girl, who wouldn’t have been more than 3 or 4, broke ranks with the baby that mum was pushing in a stroller, darting into the front of the shop. As I said, I was grumpy. I definitely couldn’t be bothered dancing around all of that, so I kept slowly walking… still fiddling with my wallet trying to poke the rest of the coins back down and get my $10 note in.