Virtually Paul

Bored out East

If the previous few posts didn’t give it away, I’m a little bit bored!

I’m house-sitting for one of my bosses in the eastern suburbs for the week while he goes on a well-deserved break with his family. I have a cat and a dog to keep me company but I’m still a bit on the bored side.

If any of you easties want to do something after work one night this week, drop me a line.

Janelle’s Fashion Advice

I left a comment on my little sister’s blog last night that some of you might get a bit of a chuckle out of.  Apparently I take everything far too seriously.

Janelle’s Reality

A bit of New Hope for Essendon Bapts

I make no apologies for the horrible pun. The events of Sunday can still manage to bring a smile to my face.

After over 2 and a half years since our previous long time senior pastor had to step down from the role, Essendon Baptist has finally appointed someone else to take on the role for the long haul. The congregation voted** overwhelmingly to endorse Daniel Bullock, currently the Senior Associate Pastor at New Hope (Blackburn North) Baptist Church, to be our new senior pastor.

Before I had any idea about who was coming to pastor our church, I had a strong sense of God really gearing up to do something that would exceed my expectations. I’m really looking forward to meeting this guy. Having had some exposure to people outside of my church over the last 18 months who take ministry formation studies quite seriously, I’m pretty stoked that God’s called someone with Daniel’s educational background in Christian ministry to be our pastor. He also comes with glowing recommendations from the multitudes of Blackburn Northians that I know.

Welcome to Babylon, Daniel.

** (If anyone is wondering where the little rant about baptist church governance has gone… I voted against leaving it here!)

Paving the Way

On Saturday, I declared the day the first official Man Day in the Bachelor Pad where I live.

I began the day with a manly bacon and eggs breakfast with some baked beans on the side. Then, in a very manly way, I did my washing, did all the dishes for everyone (aren’t I nice!) and cleaned the kitchen.

I also went for a little drive up to the real estate agent’s office that manages our little rental property and suggested that the landlord might like to locate some pavers for us so that we can avoid the mud pit that was once the property’s front lawn. As luck would have it, he gave me the address of a house he was involved with, that had a couple of hundred old pavers stacked up next to the garage waiting to go to the tip. Score!

I returned home and rallied the troops. My housemates weren’t quite as enthusiastic about Man Day as I was. Heath disappeared to go and play musical instruments with his girlfriend, leaving Warren and I, as usual, to maintain the standard of manliness about the house.

We laid our pavers out, even setting up a string line as a guide so that we could pretend that we know something about bricklaying activities and the like. Anyway, the first paver went in fine… but as I gave the shovel a good forceful dig into the ground to put in the second one, I heard that sound that every pirate on treasure island loves… but every DIY try hard digging in his front yard dreads. I’d hit something.

Fortunately, it was the previous set of pavers that had been completely buried in the front yard under about an inch of dirt. So now we have lots of pavers. And in true DIY style, we’ll think about finishing the job next Saturday.

Thought for Food

I have come to the sad realisation that my cooking skills are rather boring.

I’m coming up on three years of share house living, since moving out of my parents’ house where food happens by itself and dishes get cleaned up on their own. Since then, I’d have to say I’ve acquired what I’d call a reasonably decent basic repertoire of basic meals to cook. I can whack together a decent spaghetti bolognaise for a group of visiting friends (or failing that, a reasonable stir-fry in all its gluten-free splendour). I’d like to think that I keep myself reasonably well nourished.

I’m getting bored with it all though. I woke up this morning and the idea of a bowl of Nutri-grain with milk made my stomach pre-emptively unimpressed. I settled for some cruskits grilled with cheese on the top and a glass of OJ. There has got to be more to brekky than that! I’ve tried doing google searches to find some inspiration but all of the food that people blog about looks like it is incredibly overcomplicated.

So, I appeal to you, my loyal blog readers to inspire me. What’s your favourite recipe for dinner? What’s your favourite breakfast food? What are some good, reasonably healthy things that you can make at the start of the week in a batch and keep plugging away at, in true bachelor pad style?

Oh… and just to make it a challenge:

I am allergic to nuts, especially peanuts, which consequently excludes all forms of satay and curry. I don’t like chocolate. Peas suck. Tuna is yuck.

An Icecream Man Joke

The driver of an ice-cream van has been found dead in his vehicle. He
was covered in hundreds and thousands and chocolate-dip. Police believe
he topped himself.

It was just too good not to share.  From the Jimeoin website.