i'm not hiding...

...just tired. It's cold season and fighting illness off takes more energy than I thought. Half term is coming up soon and I despair of geting sick before then or during the break (it's my holiday!*). I am taking ColdFx (thanks, Mum) and cutting out excess activities. Off to bed I go, hoping for a nice Saturday lie-in. Take care of yourselves, everyone.

*I hope that I can go away over the break and I've been saving for a few months to do so. Maybe Portugal for a couple of nights? So excited that I might be able to pull it off!

new kitchen item

In a very exciting event, Matt and Ant and I have inherited a small George Foreman grill. Woo hoo! I used it for the first time today, grilling some marinated chicken breasts to serve to some friends from church. I marinated them with half soy sauce and half maple syrup with added garlic and ginger. Wonderful! I am looking forward to learning about how to use it properly.

daily devotions

I really love Bible reading. (I'm so pleased about reading through the Bible last year. It was hard but worth it.) My perennial struggle, on the other hand, is maintaining a routine of prayer. I have been stuck in the mire of prayerlessness for such a long time. I finally had an idea that seems so obvious I wish I had thought of it long ago. I have a routine Bible reading time every morning and I decided to make that my prayer time instead. I feel as though I will be motivated to make time later in the day for my reading because I enjoy it, and I'll have the benefit of a ready-made routine that I can use for my prayer. I am using the book Face to Face (Kenneth Boa) at the moment, to help keep me on piste.


I received my new Bible from Canada and so I am using my Dad's new New Testament reading plan, which has the books grouped by writers and backgrounds. It starts with Mark, 1 & 2 Peter, and Jude. (I can provide copies by email to anyone who is interested in seeing it all.)

love food!, part two

No sooner had I switched off my computer and crawled into bed than I wanted to turn it back on. I was reading tonight from The Prayer that Changes Everything by Stormie Ormartian, a gift from my mother ages ago that I have rediscovered. I was praying about God's gifts in creation and thanking him for all that he has made: the beautiful earth and the people around who bear his image. I went to read Psalm 104 as directed and one thing jumped right out at me that I am thankful for in creation: food!

He makes the grass grow...
and plants for people to cultivate--
bringing forth food from the earth:
wine that gladdens human hearts,
oil to make their faces shine,
and bread that sustains their hearts. (Psalm 104:14-15)

I just want to say how thankful I am to God for fruits and vegetables! I really love eating them and I love that he made so many varieties. I am grateful that something so healthy is also tasty and can be made into so many things. I think it's brilliant that God was creative with vegetables and I think this shows his love for us.

Ant has just told me I am insane for sitting in bed blogging about my love of veg. But why should I hide my excitement and love of leafy greens? Sigh. Goodnight, Heavenly Gardener.

love food!

Ant and I had a little picnic this afternoon: wine and cheese and crackers, and peanut butter.


I love eating and cooking and photographing and writing about food. Ant made the salads above for us a few weeks ago. Aren't they beautiful? And the curry below was for dinner a few weeks before that.


That's all for now. Bedtime is my other love! And so off to bed I go.

teachers' strike?

The National Union of Teachers has confirmed that they are going to ballot their members for a one-day strike on 24 April. The below inflation pay rises announced a week and a half ago are not enough.

pay

I really want to write about teachers' pay, but I am overtired from teachers' workload! So here are some links instead.

The BBC reports on a 2.45% increase for 2008, announced today.
The National Union of Teachers reply by saying they will give a "robust response".

One issue about how the announcement is being taken is that the government is using CPI (Consumer Price Index) as their measure of inflation (see Ed Balls comment in the BBC article), whereas the NUT is using RPI (Retail Price Index) as its measure. CPI doesn't include housing costs, so surely RPI is a better indicator? This government page says that RPI is the measure that should be used for wage bargaining, but this is not what they are doing. CPI is currently at 2.1%, whereas RPI is at 4%. So this announcement means another below inflation pay rise for teachers.

The NUT will probably still ballot its members for industrial action, and if successful, hold a one-day strike.

exhibition

On Ant's prompting, I decided to visit BETT today, a technology in education exhibition being held at Kensington Olympia this week. I convinced Sarah to register as well and we cycled there in the morning. Olympia is a huge venue, truly vast, and it was filled with stands handing out flyers, giving demonstrations, and talking with visitors. We both really enjoyed seeing some new things, but we disliked being sold to so much. We attended a seminar about maths and graphing software, which I enjoyed and Sarah found a bit confusing; we found and displayed a correlation between handspan and shoe size. I got loads of free goodies (Sarah admits that freebies were one motivation for going): two Guardian sections, 29 brochures, one stress ball, two pens, one foam cube to put together, a cloth bag, two CDs with demo software and resources, three journals, and a book about the career paths of secondary maths teachers.

We stopped for lunch at one of the in-house cafes (overpriced, though nice, sandwiches). A few stands were handing out food as well, for example, chocolates, a fortune cookie (with the company's website URL inside!), and a frog-shaped biscuit. But the best freebie of all was at the BBC stand. One of the things they were demonstrating is a part of their website called 21cc, and they were showing a piece of software in which students build an athlete and feed them, then study their agility and calorie expenditure. So they were handing out healthy treats: BBC branded oranges! Hahaha! How fantastic is that.* I was so taken with them, I ended up taking two.


We stayed until closing time are learned some neat things. Our school has a set of handheld voting pads that don't get used much and so we visited the company's stand to see how they can be used and I plan to try them out in the next month. I got some resources for the maths graphing software we have at the school already and I really hope to use it more as well in lessons. I have already been using it a bit for coordinate plotting and line drawing.

There was a stand there from the teachers' union we are part of and we chatted with the staffers a bit. It seems more and more likely that the union is going to ballot its members for a strike soon after the government makes its announcement about our next three years of pay. It's suspected that they are going to fix our pay rises at 2%, which is below inflation. Gordon Brown has been saying that all public service workers will have to sacrifice to help curb inflation. We have had no news of our pay negotiations this week, though. We are waiting with baited breath to see what will happen next.

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*To make my parents' evenings go smoothly I usually have a bowl of small chocolates or sweets on my table for the parents and children who come. It's a popular stategy, but sometimes I cringe about the unhealthy aspect. One evening I brought little boxes of dried fruit pieces (similar in size to the raisins we used to get in our lunch boxes as kids). Now I have a new idea: maths branded oranges! Perfect!

small personal triumph

I have now managed to cycle to work three days with my clip shoes and pedals! On Sunday Ant put the pedals on for me and I tried them out a bit on our road, going back and forth, clipping and unclipping my shoes to get a feel for it. Then Ant and I cycled to the park nearby and met Sarah so I could ride around a little there. It was terrifying and I found that unclipping was very stressful. I began to panic as I slowed down, worried that I might not be able to unclip and then fall over with my feet still attached. I had one close call, which was really fine in retrospect, but I was so nervous that I freaked out a bit before successfully unclipping. These last three days I have been cycling to work a bit more cautiously and I can now unclip more quickly as I approach a set of lights or a junction. I am hoping that I make it to the end of the week without incident; that shall be a major triumph.

cycle update

-new top speed: 44.8 km/h, downhill on the way home tonight
-only recent close call: a tree branch in the face
-tire pressure last night: 40 psi
-tire pressure after top-up last night: 70 psi
-newest accessory: overshoes (or shoe covers or booties in Canada), ugly but highly useful
-weekday ride distance: 20.2 km
-weekday ride time: 60 minutes
-current count on trip counter: 4415 km

lefties

Why is it that the right hand rubber glove always breaks first? I usually keep the lefts since they are still good, but it seems a bit pointless now that I have this huge collection built up. I have all these lefts with no partners.

happy new year!

Ant and I made it back to London this morning at stupid o'clock. I managed to get a bit of sleep on the plane with the help of my eye mask--well, I managed to close my eyes and doze off a bit. Ant had a worse time and didn't get much sleep. (Thankfully we didn't get woken up for the turn of the new year.) We had the normally long wait in the baggage hall, eventually exiting with our two (hugely heavy) bags and Ant's new snowboard. Since arriving at home we collapsed for a four hour nap and then an Eastenders marathon, with Ant catching up on all the happenings in the Square. We managed to make a nice meal using the few items left in the pantry (sweet potato risotto) and Ant ironed his shirt for work tomorrow. Now we're off to bed--exhausted. We're hoping that we wake up at the right time. Ant's not too thrilled at having to go to work and I'll have to restock the fridge and prep for lessons on Thursday.

Did everyone else have a good new year's celebration? Any stories to tell? Many blessings for the year ahead.

race of champions

Just before we left London Ant and I went to the Wembley Stadium for the Race of Champions. Wembley had been transformed with the pitch covered over in tarmac and a one kilometer race track constructed.


Motorsport drivers from all different disciplines were there racing against each other. I bought the tickets in the summer for Ant's birthday when I heard that the Formula One ace Michael Schumacher would be racing. He was brilliant, setting track record after track record, but he narrowly missed gaining the Champion of Champions crown.

We also watched stunt drivers and motorbikes. This stunt driver put his car into a doughnut spin, then climbed out the window while it was still spinning and stood on the bonnet while the car whipped round, to much applause. Then he ran over to his other car and put it into a spin around the still rotating original car. He finished by climbing out of the second car and returning to the first to drive it away in a puff of smoke.


When we came out it was night time. We queued with thousands of people to get back onto the tube. It was very well managed by horseback policemen and we made it home incident free.

thought of the day

"Science has radically changed the conditions of human life on Earth. It has expanded our knowledge and our power but not our capacity to use them with wisdom."

- J. William Fulbright

God, may we grow in wisdom this year as we seek to use our knowledge and power more responsibly. Teach us to love each other and our world.

travelling

The term is over. It's been the busiest term of my career and I am proud that it is also the first half term that I have gone without a sick day. This may be due in part to getting a flu jab in October, which I now intend to do yearly. I had so many reports and parents' evenings in the last month and a half that it hardly seems possible that there could be any left (although there are both on the first week back in January...).

We spent most of yesterday travelling. We ordered a cab to take us to Heathrow for our morning flight. When were just outside the airport, I checked the tickets to see which terminal we were heading for and discovered we were actually flying from Gatwick airport! The cabbie laughed and sped around the M25 for us. After a massive cab fare we managed to make our plane and even saw Matt and Bree at the gate before they headed home to Texas for Christmas.

Now we are in New Jersey visiting Ant's uncle and family for two nights. Ant has three adorable cousins, Sam, Jessica, and Emily. They are at school for half a day today and while they are out Ant is practicing on their Wii. I have tried the bowling and I made my Mii character. It is really quite fun. I approve of a video game that makes you move; kudos to Nintendo for a good idea. Ant has again displayed that he is an extremely fast learner; he has mastered bowling and tennis and is now learning to golf.

We fly to Halifax on Saturday and we're both so excited to see family and to be home relaxing.

new year's resolution, early

Last weekend I picked up a couple of second hand books at the library book sale (so now you know how I spend my exciting weekends!). Last weekend also involved some searching questions about my career goals with Ant and Matt and Bree. One of Bree's career values tests revealed that I prize the ability to learn and gain knowledge above other job qualities.

As a result I've started having that resolutions feeling a month early. First on the list is turning away from the TV more and turning to books more. I have so many books that I really want to read at the moment and I know they will improve my mind and my life if I do. One of the books from the library book sale is Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey, subtitled How my Faith Survived the Church. I've read the first two chapters about two people who exemplified faith to Yancey when he was questioning: Martin Luther King Jr. and GK Chesterton. It's been fascinating so far and very inspiring. Also on the list of things to read is Conflict of Visions, a book I was lent recently about the two main ideological views behind politics. At school I've also started spending mroe time reading: at lunch, while I'm chomping on my sandwich. I'm working on a behaviour management book which has been very interesting so far. At bedtime I've turned back to Kenneth Boa's Face to Face prayer book. It's been good to examine my days each evening and talk to God about his grace and plans. As stated by another author who shaped my ideas, Bill Hybels, "an unexamined life is not worth living."

Maybe some of these new ideas will help me figure out what I am doing in my career. I feel more at ease with my mind more engaged and examining in my everyday life.

oil

Our pastor said something today I had not heard before about oil in the Bible. We were reading the parable of the virgins waiting for the bridegroom in Matthew 25:1-13. They are bridesmaids waiting to escort the groom to collect his bride. Their job is to light the way with their lamps and to dance with the couple as he takes his bride back to his house for a seven day celebration. Five of them don't bring along enough extra oil and so their lamps go out before he arrives. These foolish women miss the celebration because they're not well enough prepared. The other five bridesmaids bring extra oil and so they're ready when the groom arrives. They accompany the couple, dancing, into the wedding banquet. Jesus tells his disciples to be careful and watch because in the same way his second coming will be a surprise and we want to be well prepared.


Since it's the start of Advent, Pastor Hany was saying that we need to be expectant, prepared, and ready for a celebration when Christ comes again. And he said that oil in the Bible often symbolises the Holy Spirit. This is an idea I had not come across before. But he mentioned that when priests or kings were anointed with oil it was a symbol of the Holy Spirit coming on them. (For example, in 1 Samuel 16:13, "So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the LORD came upon David in power.") So the five bridesmaids who weren't prepared for the groom and his banquet can tell us that we must have enough of the Holy Spirit to live expectantly.

So, Lord, pour out your Spirit as you say (in Joel 2:28-29, "And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.... on my servants, both men and women"). May I be expectant and prepared for you.

a few random photos

Here are a few photos from the last few weeks that I have been too preoccupied to post.

My kitchen table during a busy marking day one Saturday.


Bree and I went to Buckingham Palace a few Sundays ago on one of my city walks.


The Palace is closed most of the year (because the Queen lives there, duh). I wish we would have gone to see it this summer like we kept saying we should. Hopefully Bree will still be here next summer to go with me.


These are the gates to Green Park (one of the royal parks).


As we were walking through Green Park and Hyde Park, dusk was falling. We timed our walk to finish when it was dark and take the train home. This is the pond in Hyde Park. Alongside the pond there were large groups of roller bladers who meet on Sundays for a big group skate.


This is a photo of what I consider dessert when Ant is not around. We don't make dessert very much, but when we do Ant always prefers chocolate. Me, I prefer fruit. This is only a dessert by name--it only contains granola, plain yoghurt, and stewed cranberries--hardly any sugar.

long silence

I've been hiding out over the last week because Ant's mum has been very ill and died yesterday. He and his sisters were able to be with her until the end and she died peacefully, although suddenly. Please pray as Ant has to make all the arrangements now. I will be away this weekend with his family.

I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust."

--Psalm 91:2

housework

--from Indexed