Archive for November, 2006

Scotland

In which visiting your brother in Scotland is a valid reason to skip 15 minutes of a German Lesson

I’m writing this post from the home of my brother and his wife’s good friends’ house. I am not sure what these people are called, but they seem pretty nice anyway. We had a pretty militant conversation over dinner about how fundamentalist Christians and Calvanists were wrong. Or, it was more of a lecture really. Or well, that’s how it seemed to me. Still very nice people though.

From the Start

I came up to Scotland via the train and the car and arrived at my cousin’s house. My cousin comes from the rich side of the Roberts family (i.e. not ours), and they have a pretty impressively large house. My sister-in-law has an extremely good way of getting us free accomodation. The below is an approximation of a telephone conversation:

Monika: Oh, Polly, we were just thinking how it would be nice to come up and see you.

Polly: Yes, sure, we’d love to see you.

Monika: Actually, we were coming up to Scotland this weekend.

Polly: OK, you’ll have to come and see us.

Monika: Great! Um… Would it be possible if we could stay the night?

Polly: Sure, no problem.

Monika: We’re bringing some friends, would it be alright if they stayed too?

Polly: How many friends?

Monika: 3…

Well, you get the idea. Along the same line as her “A Manly beard, not like yours Jonney” comment, this is something that will probably turn up in conversation for a few months/years/generations to come.

They were very kind, but I think Paul (Polly’s husband) was a bit confused as to why a load of people he didn’t know were staying in his house. Ah well, she gave us some amazing brownies, which can only be a good sign. We should probably wait a few years to see them again though…

St. Andrews

We then of course went to see Ally. It was good to see that Ally had a NES in his house, and we had a good meal too. We walked around random famous landmarks in St. Andrews, which was fun. We didn’t see Jim Cronin though, so I didn’t get to say hi to him for Becky, but I’m sure she says hi to him plenty already.

Well, my tolerance of a laptop keyboard has reached its end… I HATE the things. I HATE THEM.

Well, God Bless.

Because I haven’t posted

After 2 weeks of not taking a small window of opportunity to post, I thought it was high time for a bit of guilt posting.

There are a number of things that have happened over the last week. Firstly:

Cake

Whereas before, I used to make cakes once in a while, I’ve now really got into it. I actually like baking the things more than eating them, which will probably surprise many of you.

In the past week or so, I’ve baked three things:

Zuccini Bread

This recipe has its birth in Shawnee, which is Monika’s parents’ hometown. Monika is my inspiration as far as making cakes are concerned. Oh yes, and I must mention Lois, who treated us to a load of Northern Ireland style tray bakes a couple of weeks ago, which is cool.

German Hazelnut/Chocolate cake

This is a recipe Monika gave me, and it is the second best recipe I have ever tasted, second only to Tiramisu, which is definitely saying something. It was covered in melted white chocolate. This was made for our church’s International Night, which was an event based on the one done on MV Doulos.

Chocolate Cookies

I got this recipe from:

A Cook's Book of Decadence

It tasted good despite the book’s silly name. There’s nothing sinful about eating cake, unless you eat too much, in which case the person eating it or forcing it on someone else, and not the person who prepared it who is guilty of decadence. Please show me any Bible verses you think show otherwise.

Cake on Fridays

Having brought in two cakes on two Fridays to college, I thought it was a nice tradition, and one that other people should try. I’m aiming for it to become worldwide.

I must agree with Jonathan however:

“Why just Fridays?”

Fair question IMHO, but one day a week is a good start. I suppose we want to still be able to get through doors though.

Now we move onto our next point, which is nameably how I’m progressing with being offline.

The eye removed, or merely temporarily closed?

Well, unfortunately I’ll have to go with the latter. I’m still lazy. And me ending every day talking on MSN is gradually moving away from being other people’s fault to being my fault. Most of the time I’m simply to busy to go online, which is not really a very pious reason for not going online. This has been particularly a problem in the last week, which was a time where I could see definite roots of bitterness and backsliding in my life.

Emma did the second CU session this week, which followed a terrible (not to be too judgemental) session in which we debated whether or not it was possible for God to do something evil. It was a liberal leading. Bad idea.

For those who are not sure whether or not God can do evil, please read 1 John 1:5. I also made my doubts about Limited Atonement probably a little too clear, which I don’t think was helpful. I should’ve shut up. I was debating whether to even go to the first session, because I knew I’d say something I’d regret.

But I digress. The main point was that Emma reminded us of “Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding”, which was something she had found helpful. I thought about this and realised I always have a plan B when praying. I’ll invent a new analogy, which may or may not be helpful:

It’s difficult to get off stilts, but it’s much safer on the ground. Our “Plan Bs” being the stilts of course.

That verse is one of the verses I have secretly and subconciously looked down on as something for people who don’t read the Bible properly, and look for inspiration passages. I’ve been guilty for a long time of a sense of oneupmanship on the Chrisitans who create inspirational calendars that never give any sort of context and gave us Father’s love letter. It’s like how people who have only read small parts of the Bible keep quoting Psalm 23. It’s not that I don’t believe that psalm or think it’s not an amazing passage, but I often feel like I’ve gone further in my spiritual walk than that psalm is catering for. I hate the pride in me, but at the same time I often feed it.

My pride showed up glaring red today when I started complaining to my mum about how my Geography teacher had given me such a low predicted grade (E). Rather than wanting to work hard to prove him wrong, my first reaction is to want to argue that he’s marked my work incorrectly and the marking system is stupid, which I have argued on several occasions.

Anyway, good bye for now. I know the last part of this post was a bit dismal, but I’m often at my most critical at 10, because it’s too late in the day to fix anything I’ve done. Good Night

Gutted

Zen Cart is amazing, and all this time I was using Wordpress e-commerce lite.
Please note that this post was posted after a brief look through the features of Zen Cart. After slaving hard to create features that did similar things at an inferior level, you can imagine I was slightly annoyed that I hadn’t noticed it before.

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