SALUTATION
Greetings to all of my readers on this, the eve of Michaela’s return to the US for a month and the Penultimate evening before my departure for Venice & the start of my European tour. I take the opportunity now to say “Hi” because I don’t know how much access I will have to the internet during my travels. I will, however, try & post when I can & if I get a chance I may even do some group emails. In the mean time, this is probably going to be a very long email, partly to make up for the fact that I may not make it to the computer as much as I would like & also because I haven’t written anything major in a while. I’ll try to link everything in with my impending travel anyway.
FRUSTRATION
This evening I am just a little worried because I started to come down with a sore throat & my glands are feeling a little swollen. I am hoping that it is just that I am very tired & stuff & not a beginning sign of Glandular Fever (Mono). That certainly would be a major spanner in my travel works.
COMMISERATION

I was putting my Salomon sneakers today when I broke one of the laces. It would be OK, except they are more of a cord with a tightener than normal laces, so they are fairly impossible to replace. As it turned out, I was wearing down the sole severely on my left foot (my good leg) so they would have needed replacing soon anyway. A good excuse to have some new shoes to travel with!
MEDITATION
On one of my last days at work, I was doing a “floor walk” and got thinking about an old Don Carson sermon I had heard at SMBC. In particular, I got thinking about one metaphor he used & how it extrapolates to life. Here is my thoughts on it.
Modern society really is geared toward a fast food attitude towards things. I am not just thinking food, though we have a great example there. If we are not eating at the burger joints, our home food, even healthy food is becoming “fast” food. Pasta, stir frys, chicken, or roasts, everything is geared toward instant gratification.
It is a phenomenon that we see perpetuated in the television world. Shows become less about dept of character & more about amusing sound-bytes. 5 second catch phrases keep us amused so that we can continue to watch without ever really having to engage out minds.
Basically we are geared toward a “quick digestion’ society. We want to swallow what we see with the minimum of chewing, then we want to digest it with as little effort as possible so that we can excrete most of what we’ve heard from out minds without really having to incorporate anything challenging.
The challenge that Don laid down (in his case referring to our approach to the scriptures) is to approach the world as a cow does grass. This sounds a little gross, but think about it. The cow has 4 stomachs. When it finds a tasy morsel it rips it out of the ground & starts to chew. Having broken it down as much as it can at once, it swallows it down & lets it digest a little before bringing it back up again & starting the rumination. At least 4 times this happens as every valuable morsel is extracted from what the cow has swallowed.
I want to swallow in everything I see over the next month & really try to digest it. It is too easy to see the world, appreciate the beauty, but never really engage your surroundings. I want to ruminate over everything that I see, so that I might appreciate the wonder of God’s creation & also the great opportunity I have to see so much of it.
Here’s to chewing the metaphorical cud in the month of December. Especially since this involved Christmas & family for most of you, I encourage you to do so too.
INFATUATION
At present my infatuation is sucking up as much culture as possible. For some strange reasons this most often seems to relate back to beers. Tonight I found a 4-pack on sale of some traditional Scottish ales, so I will spend the next couple of nights enjoying Heather ale, Elderberry Ale, Spruce Ale and a Gooseberry Ale. I will continue this beer appreciation throughout Europe, having already quizzed as many people as possible at work. I may have to extend my research though, cause I know I will have to try some Limoncello in Italy & some good Polish Vodka. Maybe this topic should have been made “Distillation”?
ORGANISATION
I am looking forward to some adventures in travel. I have booked accommodation & stuff in places where I know I am only there for a night or two (for example, I will be in Berlin for only 48 hours), but where I have a longer period of time, I have opted for only booking the first couple of nights, allowing me to move as freely as I choose. After the first three nights in Venice, who knows? I could end up in Milan, or I am even considering Monaco!
OFF TO SEE TOO MANY NATIONS
That’s it. I am off to enjoy Europe. As I said at the beginning. I will try & keep everyone in touch with what’s happening, so keep checking in on me. Rest assured I will be having fun & I hope & pray that you are too!

OK, I was going to play a game where I posted the following picture and then see if everyone could guess what it is of.

Well it is a fun game to play, but my problem is that I only have three days after this till I fly out to Venice, so I would end up wasting two posts instead of one as everyone tried to guess what my post was all about. I will just put out all out of your misery. That is probably except mum & maybe Granny who are most likely not going to be happy.
The pic is of my new tattoo. This time I swear it is going to be the last one!
here is a normalised pic of it. Now note, it is not going to end up this dark everywhere, but this is 5 minutes after the work was finished & it takes a little time to wash out.

Thanks go out to Charlotte at “Venus Flytrap Tattoo”, who is an awesome tattooist & an amazing artist.

Well there you go. So what are peoples thoughts?
Oh, and here is another pic that I really liked.

Gardners Crescent. My street

The stairway to my apartment

The park & Princes Street.

Over the last couple of days Chris has been changing servers, so things have been down, but now we are back & live!
There should be some new photos in a day or two, but I haven’t had a chance to really take anything over the last week.
Michaela gave me a russian medium-format camera for my birthday, so I will be working that thing out over the next little while too! Otherwise, I have a couple of posts in the mental banks that I need to work on. I need to get back into the habit a little over the next little while. Don’t think I have forgotten you all!
Oh, OK, here is an old photo of some flowers. They seem to be one of my big subjects these days. Go figure. This is from a fair in Madison Wisconsin. I liked the photo cause I thought it looked like I had played with it in photoshop, but I never touched it!

Special thanks to Caroline and Caroline for the cake and to Danielle too for coming in to work & giving me a special surprise birthday party!

Before I fill you in on my movements, here is a little hint for the young players. If you are sitting in a cafe having two different drinks for morning tea, remember to pay proper attention. Shaking your juice up is always a good idea before drinking it, but it is not such a good idea with your diet coke…
Yesterday I went to the “Clerk” estate in the back of Penecuik. Mic had lived here for a couple of months when she first arrived & basically this family once owned a BIG chunk of the land which is now this whole town. They have lots of grounds now that people love to walk around. Ever since I first started writing with Mic, she was telling me that this place looked like Rivendell out of Lord Of The Rings. She wasn’t far wrong.
The day was pretty rainy & Mic felt bad that we didn’t have the sun to bring out the colours, and that we missed the main body of Autumn, but it really was still pretty amazing. Here are just a couple of pics from the day.

Getting to Saturday was a painful process. I was working Thursday & Friday nights, which meant getting to get at 8am on Saturday morning. Fortunately, my other afternoon plans got cancelled, so I was able to get at least a little sleep before I headed off to my own little bit of Rugby bliss.
We went via Dermott and Benita’s place. Mic & I had met them in an Aussie pub, we had hit it off & they had invited us to come along to the Rugby with them. After having a little tomato soup & then waiting for Dermott to grab us some “roadies” (a couple of beers to drink during the walk to Murray Field), we were off!
It rained during the whole half hour walk to Murray Field, then it continued to rain during the match, but luckily we were under cover. Dermott & I were find anyway, looking as Australian as possible in our Driza-bones. Murray field itself is reallly beautiful & the vibe was great with thousands of guys cruising around in rugby jerseys & kilts and everyone feeling a good vibe.
The game was pretty awesome too. The First half was the better for Australia, with 4 tries leading to a 28-0 lead, but in the second half we really sucked & we lost that half 14-4, leading to a final score of 31-14. On the good side, we were behind one of the goalposts & it just happened to be the one that saw all 6 tries!
Anyway, I have been feeling lazy about actually writing for the last month. Again I think I will leave you with just a couple pics.

Stirling Mortlock going over for the first try of the night.

For my first time, the Aussie flags were in the minority.

I’ve been revisiting old pics & playing around with them. Here is a couple of them.

Well I am slogging through work & focussing on the fun that is coming in the future. That is coming into clear focus at the moment, cause I just booked some easyjet flights for my travel. So far the planned destinations are Venice, Geneva, Berlin, Budapest, and Prague, but I should also fit in some time to enjoy a little more of Italy, a lot more of Switzerland & hopefully Krakow!
I’m feeling fairly uninspired at the moment, so I will leave you with a couple more travel pics.

Carbisdale 10pm, whilst I was looking for the best view of Carbisdale Castle.

Georgie enjoying a moment of sun at the Clava Cairns.