Anna likes to

Stumbled across, and subsequently kidnapped, a meme. Enter " likes to" into google, and tell us the first ten results!!

This is what I got...

Anna likes to take her daughter to film sets with her
Anna likes to watch balls
Anna likes to think that her visual impairment has given her the opportunity to create visual art from a unique perspective
Anna likes to give her snakes a bath once or twice a week
Anna likes to play dumb, and is obsessed with Ikea
Anna likes to be needed, as well as to cherish and protect her loved ones, of whom she is somewhat possessive
anna likes to touch water
Anna likes to work / Anna likes to be spontaneous (two results on one page, yay!)
Anna likes to think that she has the will to win of her favourite player Roy Keane
Anna likes to tell that at this point her mother ordered her out of the apartment and she began life on her own at the age of fifteen

Go forth and Googlify, readers!

Life, love, laughter and the lurgy

Well well well. Three holes in the ground.

It's been a fairly busy few days; I went up to Cardiff again. It felt like forever since we'd seen each other, so it was wonderful to be back in his arms. Unfortunately, he got ill a day or so in. A poorly tummy, so no close cuddles, and a split lip, so no kisses... but there are a million ways of telling someone you love them (here I reluctantly include tickle attacks *grumpy face*).

I travelled up on Thursday (having completed an essay a day early to do so - unprecedented!), met Gav with some sushi, and left him to work. He came home for a bit and went out for some music-related fun while I went for a walk around the lake while the sun set. It was absolutely beautiful! I've got some photos up on my Flickr (see the link on the left).





We went to the wedding of an old friend of his, which was great. I like his mates. We left the reception early because Gav was ill (I accidentally wandered off with Rem's camera in my bag, had to go back!), in fact I got pretty worried about him the next day. Y'see last time he had stomach cramps this bad it was when I was first getting to know him. It caused him absolute agony, so I was stressing out flapping my little hands and making high pitched noises and generally being of no use whatsoever! At least this time I could do something.

When we got back to Cardiff, I tried to help him out by going shopping and cleaning up a bit. We went round to Ben's on Monday, there was music and food and a gorgeous cat. I drank enough (not much, I never drink very much) to become fascinated with spinning a yellow badge... badges are ace. Can't think of many things more fun, except maybe balloons!

There was absolutely beautiful sunshine today, which made the parting a little easier. It's mad how reluctant I was to leave. The sooner I move to Cardiff the better!

Motivation

Why is nobody online at half 9 in the morning? It's just rude is what it is.

Ok, perhaps a more pertinent question would be why am I online at half 9 in the morning.

I woke up nice and early to put the finishing touches to my essay, which I'm just gonna hand in now (one down, two to go! Woop!), a day early. I've never handed in an essay a day early before. But this time I have incentive! Cuddles!

I'm mostly motivated by cuddles. It's a huge flaw in the education system that there's no acceptable way of implementing that kind of reward system. However, now I have Gav, who's very encouraging, wants to see me do well, and bribes me with hugs.

So, I've got my essay done a lot sooner and better than I would otherwise have done, so now I can go up to Cardiff a day early! Yaaaay!

Also, here is a picture of me.


Someone on the internet called me ugly, and after my initial RARR I'm kind of thinking "Meh" so posting this picture is a way of proving... something? That I can, I think. I can. And if you thinking I'm ugly, well just don't sleep with me then, I think that's fair enough.

How I scared an old couple

Interesting thing of the day: Banksy. So true, so artistic, and so difficult to catch ;) You won't have seen this piece before, so check it out.

I had a bizarre dream last night. Gav and I were around at a friend's house - a middle-aged married couple, nice people. We were there to scare them. Half the time I was polite and friendly, but the other half I looked like this.



It was just a bag that I kept putting on my head, and then I'd wander up to the poor dears whose house we were in and go "wooooo." Or possibly it was "blaaaargh." Either way, I was quite unconvinced by it all, but they seemed suitably afraid, so we ran outside.

I was picked up by my family, and we got out of there, safe in the knowledge of a scaring well done.

Still not the strangest dream I've ever had!

A dinner party in a car park

Yesterday, walking back from university, I was greeted with the sight of a group of people, dressed up very nicely, having a dinner party in the middle of a car park. They invited me to join them, so I did. They gave me lemonade and apologised that the pizza wasn't there yet. They asked me about myself; who I am, where I'm going. There's something nicely concise about explaining yourself in thirty seconds, as if you're left with a better idea of things than when you started.

They recited a traditional Celtic toast for me to celebrate my coming move to Cardiff.

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Plymouth is a place of hills and uneven roads, cracked pavements and slippery slabs.
Wind enlivens me like nothing else, almost convincing me that I could fly if I tried.
I long for the summer, for the warmth and joy of a sunny day.
I have noticed recently more than ever the soft, earthy smell of freshly-rained on ground.
And nothing, nothing in this world, makes me happier, happy to the point of tears, happy to distraction and beyond all reason, than the feeling of being in God's hand.

It was a strange event, them sitting there in their elegant outfits, me in my jumper and jeans. But there's something so right about seizing the moment. May we all learn the courage to do so more often.

All is not lost!

I am OVERJOYED today to discover that, due to the writers' strike, I have not missed any episodes of Lost.
It's almost as if they knew...

It's been a great day for me! After an early start, I wandered around town with Tom buying sushi and stuff to design my own t-shirts. I've made mine and it's alright, I might put up a picture soon, but I'm very low on ideas for Tom's. So far I've considered drawing a dancing banana with the words "potassium funk"... but I only have purple and black fabric pens, so maybe not!

Anyway, aside from that, there's nothing left to do but introduce you all to this blog's hyperactive little sister, thiefree.tumblr.com. Visit it and follow a random link, I hope you'll like what you find!

Music and free food

I tell ya what, you don't realise just how many friends you have until you have to click "ignore all invites from this friend" for each one of them.

I've been meaning to recommend this site to you all for days. Musicovery is a remote control that will introduce you to new music, similar to Pandora (which is sadly no longer available to us UK types). It's good fun and I've been finding old favourites and new favourites for the past few days. Have a look!

Also, I just searched my blog, and remember I told you guys about Free Rice? (It's a vocabulary game where, for every word you get right, 20 grains of rice are donated to the UN World Food Programme to feed the hungry. It's funded by the adverts - utter genius.) Well I just discovered Free Flour - same idea, different charity, and instead of word definitions it's general knowledge questions. Spend five minutes today feeding the hungry!

An Answer

Whoever said you can never truly go home had a rubbish sense of direction.

I've really enjoyed being home. Sort of. Mostly. I mean, I absolutely adore my island, but so many people have moved on that I've got practically nobody to meet up with. Nothing to do.

On the plus side, I went back to my church and saw that they've started renovating the building behind our church. We used to use it for Sunday School, but it's been so dilapidated for so long that they were talking about demolishing it for a while. So to return to it today to see all the building work going on, all the people busy sanding and planing and pulling down wallpaper, is a wonderful thing.

It wasn't until I went upstairs and saw the YFC guys I did my gap year with working on the rooms that would be their offices - no, it wasn't until I saw a particular floorboard - that I remembered something pretty cool.

About a year ago, I needed to pray urgently, so I let myself into the building for some time alone. I loved that building, and I ended writing a long prayer that it wouldn't be demolished. I prayed that it would be rebuilt, repaired, and made useful. I prayed that it would be something for the community, something to help people. I prayed that it would be busy. And then I hid my prayer under a loose floorboard in one of the abandoned rooms.

So went I went back to find that that floorboard has been fixed down - presumably with my prayer still underneath it - and that the whole building is being brought back to life, I have to say - it felt good. Very good.

PS - see "My Sites", to the left. I've added this thing called a tumblog that's pretty cool.

Cutting corners

It feels later than it is, because everybody I know went to bed hours ago. I'm not tired yet. I want to email somebody, but I can't think of a thing to say...

I don't want to go on MSN because it feels like I have the same 3 conversations with 100 different people. I feel worn thin, as if I've repeated who I am to so many people that there's no rarity value in knowing me. That's a strangely lonely feeling.

There are too many people on my contact list, and so few I can talk to.

I wish I could start again. Keep the important people, and lose the worthless 80% of my memory. How much junk we carry around our heads! How many useless relationships that never went anywhere!

It isn't like that for everyone. When I was a child, I was told that loving people is like cutting the corner off a piece of paper and giving it to them. They get three corners, and you go from four to five... That's true for some people. The more they give of themselves, the more self they have. Not me. I'm like a wounded computer game character. I'm standing and fighting, but an inch away from needing to start on my next life. The paper gets smaller.

I don't mean to sound excessively emo.

I AM NOT ONE OF THESE.
I'm fine really; optimistic, hopeful. I just get lonely sometimes. Not nearly as often as I used to, but sometimes.

For your company, such as it is, I thank you.

Q&A

Blogger Frederick Buechner's Lovechild said...

In a recent interview with Joni Mitchell (showing my age again) she said that she preferred painting to poetry and quoted someone who said that all poetry involved was "muddying the waters to give them the appearance of depth"

1) Source the quote for me
2) Discuss!
3) Buy and listen to 'Blue' if you haven't already done so (listen with Gav and share the experience) and tell me that Joni Mitchell isn't a poet!

1. She made it up. I've been unable, after much frantic googling, to find anything even similar to that quotation anywhere on the internets.
2. Sometimes it's true, and poetry is intended to make our trivial, everyday feelings seem more important. Sometimes, however, they're a way of bringing our 'muddier' thoughts and feelings to light; clearing waters that are already muddy; making the deep things accessible. That's the thing about poetry, it can be anything that is felt or thought or experienced.
3. Joni Mitchell isn't a poet. ;) I'm kidding; that's clearly a very indepth piece of writing, I'll look for more of her music!

Ben said...

Are humans naturally competitive or cooperative?

Yes.



I'm so witty. Honestly though, I think we can be both, as our nature isn't fixed. You may help someone out to your own expense, or you may take advantage of them, depending on your character and your choices. Reducing it to 'human nature' inevitably involves explaining away everybody who acts in the other direction.

Homer said...

This is honestly not designed to offend you, but in search of that one Jeremy Paxman star:

A) If you'd been born to a poor family in an Indian village and raised Hindu, what religion do you think you would be now?

B) What are the implications of your answer for your faith?

I'm not offended in the slightest, they're good questions :)
a) I think I'd be a Hindu with a lot of questions. As I am now a Christian with a lot of questions. There are things about my faith that I don't fully understand, but I do fully and completely accept my need to be forgiven. Christ offers that. While the Hindu faith commends forgiveness, the absence of a monotheistic God confuses the issue of who exactly I'm being forgiven by. If I'd been raised as a Hindu, I may well have answers to things that I don't have now, but that question is a very big and important one.

b) The implications, I believe, are that there are things we could learn from other faiths. Christianity does not have the monopoly on truth, and our 'doctrine' is not infallible. That's quite a controversial statement, so I'll clarify it. The church has accepted for hundreds of years things that are not necessarily Biblically based. I can't provide any evidence to say that they are incorrect, but I accept that they may be.

Luko said...

1- Don't you think that faith as an idea pigeonholes people into not to experience things that are forbidden in certain scriptures.
2- Does it worry you that whilst some people do use religion in a nice way a lot of people just use it as an excuse to be extremely crappy to each other (from the KKK to muslim extremists to the crusades)
3- Don't you think that by having an eternal afterlifethere is a strong message that this life doesn't matter. And in retrospect people deciding to be good is like a fetus worryong about being good or bad before going onto a 'new life'
4- The scriptual ideas of good or bad were written in a mysoginistic and gynophobic society several centuries ago don't you think that they should be re-examined?

1. My faith doesn't stop me from experiencing anything. I could still murder, steal, insult etc (and sometimes I do, I'm not perfect (but not murdering though)), but I don't because it's not for the good. It's not to my advantage or anyone elses. Morality by its nature does affect what we choose to experience, but that's natural and good. Belief that doesn't affect our actions is worthless.
2. Yes, absolutely! People who use God as an excuse to do terrible things do an awful lot of damage to God's reputation and to mine. Jesus was all about the love. If you're not acting in love, you're not acting in Christ.
3. Quite the reverse. If life ended when we died, then ultimately all our efforts come to nothing and this life is a worthless attempt to stall the inevitable. If, however, there are eternal consequences to our actions, then what we do and say in this life has value. otherwise, you know, do what you want before the void claims you. Some people live that way and I don't know how they do it. No, I don't know why they do it.
4. Hahaha... I think gynophobic is taking it a bit far, but I accept your point. Should they be re-examined? Yes, absolutely! There's no value whatsoever in preserving laws cryogenically. They should be constantly re-evaluated. Some, such as the ten commandments, will be true for all eternity - others, such as a lot of the cleanliness laws, aren't as relevant in a world with antiseptic wipes.

These are, of course, my opinions. They are not the views of all Christians, and I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow if I should see fit.

Anyway! I hope these answers have been of some interest to you. Thanks!

Interesting thing of the day: online photoshoppish thing