Prep Dessert

 Tonight Jemm's prep class hosted parents and siblings for their version of Master Chef tasting.

The kids had been doing some cooking and this was the presentation and tasting of the outcome.

We parked in Colwel St and walked up the gravel path.  Turns out that amongst a gazillion rules this is out of bounds.  So I figured that we should not only flout the rules but flaunt it with a photo.

 Waiters and waitresses lining up for supplies.

The stimulus hall.

Note the multi coloured lights on two of the vertical posts complements of the Thomson's.

Also sitting at the table at the right hand side of the photo is the head master.  If you double click and put your tongue the right way, you may be able to zoom in and see his badge.

Jemma doing a fantastic job serving Dan.

At 7:30 we hightailed it out of there.
Big Daniel from up the road had been tee'd up as a baby sitter and Frank headed off to play touch.  Lost a gazillion to one or was it none.

Megan and Marcus were at the BGS "Lessons and Carrols" evening.  Marcus sang and Megan was in the audience.  Although I am sure she would have enjoyed being in the choir.

Dream World

Sunday 21-11-2010
I scrambeled around hunting through the back of draws looking for togs.  Megan kindly made me a salad for lunch then Chris and I hopped in the ute for a rendeveu with Chris's soccer team outside Corinda pool.  His soccer coach Alan had organised a trip to White Water World which for the uninitiated is the water park associated with dream world.  Some minutes were wasted attempting to locate people who had said they would come but in the end seem to have decided to just drive straight there.  We decided to car pool with Alan and so the ute was dropped back home and we jumped in Alan's Ford Explorer which at 200 000 k + appeared to have done plenty of exploring.

Arriving at White Water World (WWW fr short I guess) we discovered that to get the $25 deal we have to pay as a group.  So there is the inevitable changing of money and toting up and finally we are paid and in.  The deal included a couple of tables and chairs and we also seemed to have acquired a free "Sunday mail" on the way in.

The kids all decided to race off on their own.  So much for a father and son thing.  Some of the dads decided to read the paper.  Some mums went and bought coffee.  And a few dads went off in search of adventure.  I relaxed and skimmed the paper and then decided to go and find Chris.  So another dad and me went for a walk.  The search proved fruitless and we split up.  Shortly thereafter I came across a posse ? of wet fathers and no kids.  A bit later we were able to find the kids.  For a while we did a few rides together.  However it would appear that these kids are far more fearful than the dads.  None the less, Chris and I had a lot of fun working our way through various rides that resemble sliding down a huge toilet.

One particularly good ride was a water roller coaster.  The fascinating thing is that the inflatable in which one sits goes up hill faster than it goes down hill.  I suspect that there is some metal in the base of it and a huge linear motor built into the water slide.

At 3pm, our tickets allowed us 2 hrs in "Dream World".  as opposed to www ?.  We went in search of the tower of terror.  This scared off the kids who went to pick flowers and smell daisies.  Turned out the Tower of terror had a flat tyre so the dads queued for 3/4 hr for a 30 second roller coaster ride on the "Mick Dylan" which is a roller coaster in which you sit on a motor bike.  It was actually pretty tame with much less of that head jerking that usually accompanies such rides.

With only 20 minutes to go, I have this "Have I got my moneys worth" panic feeling and figure I jaut have to grab one more ride.  Any ride.  Here is "The Claw".  Scared?.  Don't be.  A wonderful combination of engineering design and creative fear wow factor imagination.  Basically a huge swing.  It was really quite enjoyable.  I figured though that next time, I should make a large bolt out of a card board tube or balsa wood and just as the ride starts, take it out of my shirt and show it to the person beside me and ask if they think it is important.

:)

12yo Questions

Last night at P1 we had a very interesting devotional time.  We started with Megan requesting the assitance of 7 volunteers.  Their eager enthusiasm quickly turned to suspicion when each was presented with a bowl of very dodgy food.  The looks on their faces and the smell of the green ham caused me to run and retrieve the camera.

This lead to a bible reading about Thomas who stated that he would not believe in God unless he could see the scars from the nails and place his hand in the wound in Jesus's side.  John 20:24-29

After a while the kids came up with some questions.  I figured that these were pretty basic questions that we should think about rather than waiting till some impressionable 12yo asks me and then wonders why I mumble and stammer.

1. After we die do we come back and get re born.
2. When you go to heaven do you stay a certain age.
3  There was a question about the creation of time and space.
4  Where is heaven
5  Why do I hate my life

So I figured I would put down my answers.  Please feel free to post a response with your thoughts.
1. After we die do we come back and get re born.
Some religions such as the Hindu religieon in India believe that when people die, that they are re born.  If you are good you come back as a rich person.  If you are bad you come back as some sort of disliked animal.

I believe that we have a soul or a spirit but I do not believe that we get reborn as another physical being.

2. When you go to heaven do you stay a certain age.
To me it is our physical body that dies and is buries here on earfth and my spirit goes up to heaven.  As this spirit does not have a physical form the idea of age is not relevant to me.  I would say though that my answer is No.  My spirit would age but not in the way that our physical body does.But it is possible that heaven is outside time and space as we know it.  In which case I guess that the idea of age causes a divide by zero error.  Coffee anyone?

3  There was a question about the creation of time and space.
I don't remember the exact question, but my enerstanding is that at the big bang, scientists believe that time and matter and space were created and that as the universe expands, that time and space are created at the edge of the universe.  Its not that the universe expands into something.  Makes your head spin.

4  Where is heaven
We don't know where heaven is or what it is like other than it is nice and there is a place for us there.  Perhaps another dimension.  Bt not "just up there"


5  Why do I hate my life
We have free will.  God does not micromange any of us or the environment around us.  So things, from my perspective can go wrong.  Sometimes this going wrong can make us feel bad.  It may be something at a biological level like a chemical problem that makes you feel bad or it may be other people doing nasty things.  What to do? Pray and ask God to help.  Do things that you like with people you like.  Don't waste time and energy hating those who do you wrong


As an aside,
Recently in family worship we had a very interesting discussion about intelligent design vs evoltion.
here  http://thomsoneu.blogspot.com/2010/11/family-worship.html

Ice blocking

Tonight at P1 we did iceblocking.  For the uninitiated, iceblocking is ... well sliding around on big blocks of ice.  So for the last few weeks, Megan has had the freezer in the church shed and the one in the hall, filled with big containers of water slowly changing to ice.

These photos are not really representative of the night as they are mostly of our family and many were taken after the event while we were cleaning up.  We left the hall with the windows open and the fans running to try to dry out the floor.

 ICE BLOCKING GAMES
1 Hold the ice
Teams of 5 at one end of the hall.  Each team given a ice block.
Each member of the team must have 1 hand on the ice block.
Push the ice block up the hall, toch the wall at the far end and push it back.
Sit down to signiofy your team has done it.

 2 SIT DOWN RELAY
Teams of 5.  One person sits on the ice block.  A second person pushes.
Push down to other end of hall, turn and push back.
Change over so the sitter becomes the pusher and you have a new sitter.
Continue for 5 goes.
Team sits to signify completion.

3 STOCK CAR RACE.
Put out two charis to mark the turn around markers.  Set up teams with ice blocks.  One sitter one pusher.  On go they do two laps.
Careful of broken fingers when they crash into each other.

 4 SLIDE
Put a table against the stage to form a ramp.
Two people use their feet to stop the table slipping
Another two people hold the ice atthe top of the ramp.  The rider climbs on and 3 2 1 let go.  They slide down the ramp.
Hint - Sit as far forward as possible.

 5 CURLING
Use blocks of ice like lawn bowles.  Put out a marker or jack.  See who can get closer.
Distroys ice blocks so do last.

6 BIG PUSH
Use chalk to draw a start line about 3m from one wall of the hall.
One person sits or better still lies face down on tbe block of ice.  The rest of the team run and push but have to let go before they cross the chalk line.

Family Worship

Once a month at Sherwood Uniting Church we have two simultaneous church services.  A traditional one and "Family Worship"

This week "Family Worship" was in the fellowship room.  The traditional service was in the hall because the Church was full of stuff from the festival.

A big thank you to Bob and Jenny for organising it and Jenny who is the organiser if Family Worship in general.

We started with breakfast.  I had brought the makings of pancakes but when I got there I discovered that so had someone else.  James Erickson did a great job cooking them.There did not seem to be any bowls so I ate my cereal out of some kind of serving bowl and I saw someone else eating out of a piece of random Tupperware.  Still tasted good.

We started with a few songs.  Joel on keyboard,  Jenny on PowerPoint and Grace leading.  All abelly supervised by Bob.

Later the kids moved into the main church and created artwork and the adults had a discussion about Intelligent design vs Evolution.

Bob stimulated this by showing a few minutes from a DVD on a thing called a "flagellum motor".  It appears that the "Intelligent Design" crowd feel that this little baby is just too simple yet too complicated to have "evolved".

It made for the most fascinating discussion / sermon I have heard for a while.  Sure beat the Jesus Seminar vs ACC.  It would have been good to have had more time, more coffee and more child minding to discuss this in more detail.  Some points that were raised included:-

God of the Gaps theory - This is the idea that because we have not worked out how something happened or evolved then "OK that must be God".  The problem being that over time, more and more is explained so God becomes smaller and smaller.

+?  What were the other points??? Grant, Margaret, Joel, Bob and others all contributed.  Feel free to remind me by posting a comment.

On a slightly related topic, we should remember that the whole "Intelligent Design" thing came about because the Americans do not allow RE in their state schools.  So the over enthusiastic Christians found a way to dress up religion as science.  You may have read or heard in the news that NSW is trying to replace RE with a sort of Morals and Ethics course.  A pity in my view because the side effect will be that it will be the more extreme Christians who use things like intelligent design to get religion back into the schools.  Personally I love to see RE in the schools so we can present the kids with a moderate view of a loving God in an open and honest way.  Take that opportunity away and we will have the extremists sneaking a dodgy pseudo scientific thing into the schools and present kids with a narrow interpretation and understanding of God.  My opinion anyway.

Watch this video or search YouTube for flagellum motor.  You will get both the pro and anti "Intelligent Design" folks competing for your devotion.

Sherwood Community Festival

Friday 12-Nov-2010 was the fifteenth sherwood festival and I have been involved for 14 of them.  Cripes.

This year, Frank Horky and Som helped out greatly.  Som is involved in running a festival with a Thai Temple that he attends and so his involvement let him see first hand some of the behind the scenes stuff.  Frank, Som and myself and a few ring ins put up the video screens, the light towers and a gazillion toilet signs.

Actually enjoyed this year much more than last year.  Not sure why.  Probably doing less.  George did a lot of the tech organising - Generators from Generator Hire Service (Great service and gear), Light towers, PA systems - Show Biz sound supplied 3 x PA & Light systems and Glynn provided PA & Light at the stage outside the UC).  All the stages went really well.   Jan did a great and difficult job organising stall holders.  Often having to rearrange because of some issue or other.  (Someone parked in my space, where do I get power, and so on)  Speaking of Power, David De Jeong once again did a great job looking after power during the night.  I guess he switched on the light towers.

Interestingly, I dropped in on one stage to see hw they were going and the SM relayed an interesting story that started with the words "the precious band that were just on...".  Apparantly nothing was to their liking and at one stage when the sound tech had left the sound desk, to go out into the audience (The mixing point is basically on stage), well the band decided to let the audience in on their displeasure.

Somewhat later in the night I was talking to a friend of mine and they related a story where they were listening to this band.  "Pretty good sound" when the band let fly at the soung crew.  I was going to by their CD but they just lost me when they did that.  I walked off they said.  I smiled to myself.

Carmel sits at the info desk

 Kelly - She did a great job organising the entertainment and a gazillion other things.

 Nick, Danika, Catherine and Andrew.  Andrew did a great job as always as the MC at the main stage.

 The video screen at St Matthews.  The supervisors at the right do a great job to ensure none nicks anythimg.

Interesting to note the black blob front centre.  I think that is the lens on the camera shading the flash.  Design shortcoming?.  The screen consists of dereks projection surface.  The vertical and horizontal poles are from the old YAF setup the props are 6.3m 50mm al tube.  There is a hole drilled 50mm from the end near the ground and a decent sized tent peg shoved in.  The vertical that touches the fence is GAF'd to the fence to stop it all flying away on its own. 

The projector and laptop are all in the big wooden box.  This keeps it all dry if it rains.

The image came from the old Asus running screenmonkey.  That way we could easily switch between the standard streetparty power point and the PP for the Lutherans Live Nativity Play.  The VGA output went into a VGA to composite converter.  From there the VGA continued to the projector and the composite went to the two monoitors at the front of the stage.

Franks ute used to hold the follow spot

Ash, Dan, Paul making and selling dutch doughnits while being seranaided by Sean on Air guitar

BCC band ?

This is a very rare photo of Glynn and whats more it is a photo with him smiling.  Now Glynn does smile and he is a great guy but he somehow always seems to manage to avoid having his photo taken.

Glynn did the sound at the Railway stage opposite the UC.  Ably assisted by Paul Merifield, Errol, +?.  Roz stage managed.  Gee she is a wonderfully competent woman.  There were two great girls from some catholic school who compared.  They cpopared this stage because other kids from their school were programmed to dance on this stage and they wanted to be with their mates.  So Andrew got bumped to the Main stage.

This is Nicole Johnstone.  She gained gained a degree of notrioity when she opposed Lord Mayor Campel Newman paking his busses on the site off Sherwood Rd.  Turned out they were in the same party and Campbel got his nose out of joint and gave Nicole the silent treatment and then forced her to leave the party.  Nicole has been a great supporter of the street party.  The only politician in living memory to attend more than two street party organising meetings and she took on a crap job and that was checking the dunnies had paper.    I may have to move into her electorate so I can vote for her.  She told me she is going to run again as an independant.

 Roar community choir - Megan is in this choir and they practice on Monday nights at Graceville.  Go to yaniworld.com if you would like to join them.  But surprisingly the most important feature of this photo is the BCC banner which must be displayed or we incur the wrath of the BCC beaurcracy.  That needs to be avoided at all costs.  If ever there was an organisaton obsessed with petty rules, the BCC is it.  They give us a decent donation.  $10 or $15k I think but that hardly compensates for the fees and charges they impose and the absolutely emotionally draining effect of having to communicate with them.  This year for example, they wanted $3 per square meter of footpath space that would be occupied by the festiva.  They even have a form with a check box for festivals.  What pointless triviality.

 Megan on the right getting warmed up for a solo.

The weekend

Friday night -

Megan had P1.

The rest of the night was pretty quiet.  Nothing of substance happened as far as I recall.

Saturday 

Megan has a bushband gig on Saturday night.  Did a bit of research into foldback systems.  For the non techo or non musical, a foldback speaker is the loud speaker on the stage that points back at the band so they can hear them sleves.  Very useful if they are out of tune.  You turn them up and they think they are really carrying the show.

Now I have  to decide between buying speakers with built in amplifiers known as powered speakers or plain ordinary speakers and a separate amplifier.  The decision on that will depend on what other uses will be found for the speakers.  For example as door stops or turn them on their end and place them beside the couch as a coffee cup holder.

We (Marcus, Alistair and Frank) removed the middle row of seats from the vito.  Bob kindly helped me load the PA system and the drum kit and the keyboard into the Vito and then Bob and I drove to Kenmore and set the PA up ready for the band to just rock on up and use it.

Meanwhile, Marcus took the train into town.

I then drove into town and met up with Marcus.  We were going to the BGS music dinner bit we had no tickets.  So we went to Maccas.  Marcus performed a few times during the night and also received a couple of awards.

We left after his ast performance figuring if you want us to stay and listen to a speech then we need to be bribed with food and drink which was not forthcoming.  Drove to the Kenmore venue arriving around 11:10pm.  The road was very dark but my headlights lit up several clumps of teenagers sitting or lying in gutters and on the nature strip.  Inside the band were playing and megan was attempting to teach some very drunk people to bush dance.  They were all having a great time.  I decided that since Marcus had to be up early Sunday morning to take him home.  He was already asleep in the car.  

Megan crawled into bed sometime around 1 I think.

Sunday

I think I got up around 6am and left with Marcus at 6:30 to get him to school by 7:00am for sailing classes.  Yes sailing on a sunday.  So envious.  Having dropped him at school and signed an indemnity form I figured a coffee would be in order but I could not find an open coffee shop.  Drove home.

At home decided on some scrambled eggs and coffee.  Megan advised she had to be at Church at 8:15 for a music rehersal.  I've got the scrambled eggs going, the toaster pops up and I have taken a sip of my coffee.  The phone rings and its Jacob and he tells me that he is just coming round the round about at Oxley on his way to pick up Dan.  Megan recalls that ah yes arrangements have been made for Dan to go with his friend to Dream World.  Only problem is ... No Dan.  I tell Megan, you get some togs and clothes ready for Dan.  I jump in the ute and head over to the Horkey's place and grab Dan.  Jemma was also there but not ready so I said I would be back for her later.  Back to the house with Dan and he hops in Jacobs car with Jacob and his family and we havn't seen him since.  Turns out he packed his school uniform and will spend the night at Jacob's and go with Jacob to school on Monday.

I then returned to my cold scrambled eggs on cold toast with cold coffee.

Then picked up Jemma and went to Church.  Megan lead some singing.  Heather lead a childrens address where everyone had to be quiet and then asked the kids what they could hear.  Cars, Fans, The sea :).  Jemma remarked that it was like Taize and that was what I was thinking.  "Be still and know that I am God". Heather then moved onto the opposite extreme where she handed out musical instruments and had the kids "make a joiful noise to the Lord".  Personally I thinkk there is a difference between a joyful noise and just noise.

Church finished and I do not recall a sermon.  Now thats an idea.

Darryn helped me unload the PA out of the vito and James and Natty and Tim unloaded the Drum kit.

6pm - Picked up Marcus from School.  Somewhat sunburnt.  Did I tell him to use sunscreen.  Its a tan he says.  Sure.  Red.  A tan.  yea whatever.

In the evening we had a great family meal.  Well most of us.  Dan is still away but the rest of us shared roast beef and vegies.

Then a game of Uno with Chris, Jemma, megan and myself.