Time to go back in the water

Reading week is nearly over, we start again for the 7 week stretch to Christmas tomorrow. What have I discovered over the last 7 days?

• I can work whilst the kids are around. One assignment done (fundamentally on why most Christian men have foreskins whilst most Jewish ones don't). I do have to give credit to Liz and my mum for taking them out for long and exhausting walks while I got on with the reading.
  
• Liz and I can play a game of Risk and I didn't end up sleeping on the sofa. I've never played this before, but always wanted to try it, so we bought a set. Didn't really realise the potential relationship destroying nature of the game until I prevented Liz getting complete control of Asia for the 5th turn in a row :-)
• The Pilgrim Church in Nottingham has much more bling robes than the CofE ones. I went to an ordination service at this black majority Wesleyan Holiness church tonight. Absolutely fantastic gospel music and great encouragement seeing three young, black, men dedicate their lives to serving God and bringing the light of Jesus into the world.
  

Three lessons learnt (of variable importance), time spent with the kids and dinner out with the missus. All in all, a good first ever reading week.

TimC

Do you carry important stuff on your USB Stick?

Came across this cool little utility today, increases your chances of getting your data back if you lose your USB stick.

You could also use a sync programme like this to ensure you always have an up to date copy of your stuff.

Whilst on data security, I'm using Buddy Backup as my primary backup solution - if you want to use it as well, I'd be happy to buddy up to increase redunancy on my backups - just let me know.

TimC

hope that transforms...

...is the title of a book of advent material written by members of the St John's community.

Please buy it, it's really good and the cash supports the work of the college. The attached poster says both these things in a slightly more round about way. Please print one off and stick it up in your church / publicise it in your cell or home group.

Ta

TimC

I don't trust happy...

So here I am at the beginning of my first reading week, three weeks into my first term. An opportunity to catch breath and review where we've got to. One of the execs had a catchphrase when things were going well at work, and it looked like we were actually going to hit our targets, "I don't trust happy". I think that I must have got infected by this attitude because I've spent a fair chunk of the last three weeks waiting for something to go wrong. That's not to say that everything has been exactly to my liking, and there has been the occasional irritation, but in general I am enjoying myself immensely. I'm relishing the space and opportunity to read, to think and to spend time with God.

Having said that, I haven't had to get down to writing my first essay yet, I'm aiming to do that on Monday. The trouble is that having got some head space and energy to do some reading I've started ordering books from Amazon that I actually want to read, and only sometimes does that coincide with my reading list. For instance, I came across a couple of recommendations for "Blue Like Jazz" so I ordered it, and that is the first book I have read in reading week, despite it having nothing to do with the essay I'm meant to preparing for :-) It is fantastic - see my review on Librarything for more.

TimC

Yesterday was too knackered to post as a morning's work in N's nursery finished me off big time, not used to this working lark! It was great tho - really enjoyed it despite coming home covered in orange paint. The joys of working with small people. They were fab, and I'm hoping to get more work there. I'm having my 'induction' tomorrow, a tad late but should be interesting.
Didn't make it to the pub last night as everyone called off sick/tired/double booked. Never mind, another time.
Went to the spice bible study this morning. It was on Job, so not particularly lighthearted as these things go, but pretty thought provoking. Why does God let these things happen? I don't know, and won't this side of heaven. But he is sovereign, and we will choose to praise him anyway. Easy to say ... lots of stuff came out. Seems like a group who will share lots of stuff and so be more than just a chitty chatty coffee morning. Good, IMHO.
Tonight meeting with a couple of others to organise a family celebration thingy, which should be fun. If I can keep my eyes open that is.
Tim seems to have got half a librarys worth of books to read in reading week, which I am sure he will read in a couple of days, as he is scary at that kind of stuff. We are off to the in laws for the week, so hopefully he'll rest as well as read (and play on computers of course.)

Yes I am here too!

Managed to get on at last. So, what am I doing here? Tim is doing the studying....well, I seem to be pretty busy already. There are a couple of support groups at college for 'spouses' (ugh, hate that word, some places have renamed us 'spice', lol). One is on a Tuesday evening, called Focus, it's great as it is for everyone - so there's the young, old, girls, blokes, mums, dads, newlyweds, about-to-be-weds, and various other categories which defy labelling. So far it's been a social wine and cheesy type event to get to know each other then a sort of thinking about our own calling evening, which I found a tad uncomfortable as you had to write then share stuff like 'things I like about myself', 'things I am good at,' etc. The best thing mentioned here was definately the gal who said 'well...I quite like my boobs.' Queue uncomfortable blokeys. Anyway got through that one. Tomorrow they are going bowling, which I am avoiding as I am crap at bowling and have no wish to make fool of myself in front of aforementioned blokeys, so a faction of non bowling fans are going to the pub. Much better plan. :o)
The other Spice thing is a Wednesday morning bible study-coffee morning-natter thing. Nathaniel is in his nursery (it's on the college campus) then so I get to have a break and it seems like a great group of girls (this one is all girlies, tho not just mumsy types.) Seems like it's going to be a good support group - a prayer email goes round after every session, and it's v relaxed and informal.
Apart from that, I've been getting to know some of the other Spice, we've been going to various kiddy friendly places/each others houses and chatting about life as an ordinand wife/hubby. Lots of very positive stuff - seem to be making closer friendships now as opposed to all the 'where do you come from, what do you do' stuff of the first few weeks. Thank goodness for that - all that stuff gets v v wearing after a while.
I may also be doing a bit of work in N's nursery 'Little Peaches.' I've been asked to do some emergency cover tomorrow, as one leaders child is sick and the other on a course, and they need a qualified person - I fulfil that with my teaching. It's only for a morning but hey, it's getting paid, something I haven't experienced in years, and I may be getting more regular work there after Christmas. It's a fab place and I'm looking forward to that. Then in the afternoon we have a party of one of the college children in the common room, queue lots of children running round screaming, oh joy, then thankfully the pub later to go chill.
So that's part of what I'm up to - will fill you in more as I go along. :o)

Our Story

One of the things that we have been doing through the first couple of weeks at college is sharing our stories with each other. Liz and I have been coming to the realisation over the last couple of months that we have to get better at sharing our story and letting people know the way we have seen God working in our lives.

So, Friday evening, we started writing stuff down. Liz has the advantage over me as she has boxes of diaries, whereas I have a poor memory. We're using Google Docs ( great fun doing simultaneous edits on the same document) so we should be able to publish bits of it here as we go.

TimC

With a little faith

I'm meant to be doing some reading, but it's Friday afternoon and my brain hurts, so I'm doing some faffing around instead :-)

Anyway, came across this, something to warm your hearts:

The Most Amazing Dog in the World

Tim

What I'm up to

So there is to be a second post. Just in case you were wondering what you do at vicar school, here's a clue.

First Post

This is it, the momentous occasion that is the Carter's first foray into the blogosphere.


The fairly undefined thinking is that we will use this space, all 4 of us, to keep a record of our adventure into the life of the preacher's family, and if you want to follow, please do.


We are fairly well defined by our inability to keep in touch well enough with people, so with a bit of luck and a following wind this might help with that.


Enough for a first post I think, be interesting to see if there is a second :-)


TimC