I couldn’t begin to fill you in on all the stories that I have experiences between my last post & this. Driving back from Wagga, Preaching Christmas Eve, Kids talk Christmas morning, Christmas day with the Craigs, Boxing day with the Fam, the following week on camp, followed up by two weddings (one as a groomsman) and finally, a move to Lakemba, where I am house sitting for the month!
I’m not going to bother even starting. Instead, I think I will see if I can post every day (or maybe two 😉 ) this week, delivering a photo or two for your enjoyment.
To start off the account, here is my gorgeous niece. Tell me she isn’t a treasure and I’ll call you a liar!

Here’s a little montage of the “best of the best” photos I’ve taken over the last little while.
Christmas for Timbos.
24th: Get up earlyish, put my gear together, visit Matty & Lisa (and my lovely Godsons Tom & Will), drive to Church, do sermon prep all day, Preach @ 7pm service (we have a 5,7 & 10:30), hang with JT in the evening, go to 10:30 then head home & crash.
25th: 9:30am service, do a kids talk (should be a hoot! I got to help sew in my prep for this one!), drive home & pack the car, drive to the Craig’s house for Christmas with Shona & Co., then drive up to the Hunter Valley for Christmas dinner with my family.
Busy days, but good times. I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning & also to camp which happens straight afterward.
We’ll see how many blogs happen over the next week. No promises…

I guess I have a sort of love/hate relationship with road trips. I do enjoy having open road in front of me, knowing that there is unlimited potential lying there. Who knows what’s going to be in front of me? On the other hand, I occasionally struggle, because I usually when I am travelling, I am trying to get somewhere & when there is a destination that is in my mind, then the exciting stuff that I might pass on the way can loose a little of it’s lustre.
It is hard for travelling stuff to maintain a shine when the destination is my sister’s place in Wagga Wagga. Amy and Andrew (Sis & Bro in Law) are heaps of fun to hang out with, all three of the kids are gorgeous & this time my Dad is down here to boot!
So my travel tales over the 6 hour period are pretty minimal. I listened to test cricket for almost the whole time on the way down (Australia won the “Ashes”, Yay!!!!), and I only really stopped for a bit of petrol & some lunch, then for a couple of happy snaps of a hill.
And now when I think about it, I am not sure I am building too many stories here, or at least ones I want to share. It is great just to hang with the kids (they grow so fast!) chat to Amy & Dad, and watch episodes of “firefly” at night (A&A’s current obsession, and possibly a future one of mine!).
So meanwhile, you’ll have to make do with a couple of pictures. One old, a couple new.

Here is a pic that I took when I went out with Jodi Mac the other week. Love Sydney!

A pretty tree on the way to Wagga. (Best viewed large)

More road shots…

Big props to Maccentric in Chatswood. I emailed them & outlined the problem with my computer & I got an email back inside 24 hours, saying essentially “It sounds like a problem that could be fixed without us. Check out these websites that tell you how to do it so you don’t have to pay $125 an hour to get me to do it for you!”.
48 hours and a reinstall of my operating system later, things are working again. There are little bits & pieces of stuff that I have lost & will have to fix, but basically everything is up & running again.
OK, so it is almost 1am here, but I just HAVE to celebrate by posting a couple of pictures from the two weddings I have been photographer for over the last couple of weeks.
I’m back baby! All I have to do is work out how to make my computer access the net from Phil’s house & it will be 100% go!!!!

Check out the sweet “Quadruple Magnum” look from the 4 little Zoolanders. Elaine & Matt (Bride & Groom in the center) Janet & I (The two photographers for the day). This was from the 2nd of Dec.

A fish-eye shot from Colin & Cath’s (Kath?… I always forget) wedding that was on the 9th.
One more to go on the 16th, then I am free & clear!

There will be Pictures To Come in the near future. I have some great night shots that I took with Jodi, and I could also give you a couple of teasers from yesterday’s wedding of Elaine & Matt, but it will all have to wait till I have my computer running again.
Meanwhile, I considered starting a story for you, but instead I think I might go to bed.

Ok, there is so much to catch up on. I don’t know why I haven’t been blogging. I just haven’t…
Exams have been finished. The subject I was most worried about I have passed, so everything else should be just fine! In the week following exams, we have had end-of-year dinner (which I missed because I feel strongly about being at Youth Group on friday nights) and the Grad Service (after which people all go to the pub & hang, but I missed out because I had church on & then I was too trashed after a long day).
I started a new job last Wednesday working for Anglicare, driving a van for the “Toys & Tucker” appeal. It is good fun, I get to see a lot of Sydney, I got to listen to the first Ashes Test on the radio while driving (Non-Australian/English would not understand the true importance of this iconing sporting event… Summer has truly arrived when the cricket is on ABC radio!), and I get some free exercise moving literally tonnes of canned food & toys each day!
Today, however, was not ideal! It started by getting a fine for having my car parked facing wrong direction. I am usually a stickler for this, but I was scared of having to reverse park the 1 tonne van I’m driving, so I parked it outside Shona’s parents place for the night. Of course, we aren’t even talking about some piddly little fine. $128 for a dodgy direction! Crikey!
OK, round two is just that my back is starting to hurt a little because of all the lifting that I have been doing. I try to follow good lifting practice, but when the van you are around it not tall enough to stand straight in, you really can’t lift properly all the time.
Part three, the big kahuna is that my computer crashes every time I boot it up. I had a minor panic, but then my little bro (whose house I am staying at) showed me how to get it to boot up on “safe mode”. It booted up then, so that gives me hope, since it doesn’t seem to be a fatal error. Hopefully I can save the beastie. Thankfully, I have lots of stuff backed up.
So there you go… I have been slack in writing recently, but fear not, I have a couple of ideas stocked up for posts, so look forward to such articles as “the toilet & a good book: a modern love affair”.
(P.S. This post is dedicated to Bec. I hope it provides a couple of minutes of procrastination for you!)

I’d like one of these little fellas guarding my door!
(He’s from ‘Sculpture by the sea’. I went a couple of weeks ago with Joel Mc.)

Girls, if you are anything like the girls I have met over the last 5 days, you may as well just skip the following story & proceed directly to the pictures of the ring at the bottom of this post.
——————–

Why would you propose a couple of days before your exams start?

Some might ask.

(Why would you write a blog about it at 11pm the night before your worst exam?)

Others might also query…. to that question there is no answer!
As to the first question, people want to know, so here’s the story.

Continue reading “So the story's told” →

I have to say that writing on this blog really is cathartic. Even if no one was to read, I think I might still keep it up for a while because it is good to be able to think things through as you write them out. You know, the old adage that you don’t truly know something till you can explain it to someone else?
It’s nice for me to write stuff, plus I also love being able to look back at my history & see not only what I have done and thought, where I was geographically and where I was psychologically. All those things that a photo itself might not capture.
That said, I have to admit that it’s not all just about the internal stuff.I do love the comments too. I have one of those lovely little statistics things that tells me that there are between 150-200 “unique” hits are received a day (that is, not just the same person coming again and again, or visiting multiple pages). Occasionally I find myself wondering “If there are so many people who read, how come I don’t get like a billion comments?
Some people have said that they like to read, but they never really feel like commenting. It is more of a voyeuristic thing than it is an interactive thing. Others have said that they never know what to say, so they figure that it is easier to say nothing than to say the wrong thing. Others…. well who knows.
Of course, it’s nice to know that lots of people like to visit my site, and it is flattering to know that there are more people out there than those who leave their own finger print on the site, but sometimes I have been curious & I have tried ways to get a little interaction.
I might pose a difficult question, make a serious statement, or delve deep into my confessional box. Sometimes it has worked OK, sometimes it hasn’t.
Well tonight I have the perfect excuse for you, dear reader to leave a comment.
You don’t have to say something profound. In fact, if you want, I could even draft your comment for you (though original works will certainly be appreciated too).
All you need to say is…
“Congratulations”.
“Why?” you ask.
Because she said “Yes”