wildeabandon | More bullet points...

I keep getting frustrated that I feel like I've got no time and I'm not doing very well at keeping in touch with people, and then I feel as though I've got no right to feel like that, because I've only been working three days a week since the start of the year, and I've now handed the St John's reins back to Mthr Alice, so surely I can't still be overworked. Except it turns out that all the things I'd been putting off because they were less urgent than all the other things are gradually becoming more urgent in turn, so it never actually stops.

Stuff that's been going on since I last updated

Work continues apace on the house. That doesn't actually require much from me - mostly just a fortnightly meeting with the builders and architect, and then conveying any decisions made back to them after discussion with robert_jones and obandsoller. It's quite exciting watching things take shape though. For a while there was a big hole in the garden, and a pile of dirt that covered about half the ground floor almost to the ceiling. The dirt has now been taken away, and the hole filled in with cement, and walls are starting to take shape.
I've started the new contract, which slightly annoyingly involved trekking out to Birmingham for a day in order to pick up a laptop, but other than that is going pretty well.
I think Thronescamp went pretty well, especially considering that both the_alchemist and I were far too busy to actually organise it. But it turns out that after mumble years of readthrough organising, with a group who know the ropes, you can completely half-arse it and still have it turn out fabulous. My favourite "stuff organising itself" moment was the bit where I sat down at the computer to email atreic and say "Would you be up for arranging the bonus walk we planned for Friday morning" only to find an email from them asking "Would you like me to arrange the bonus walk?"
Also, one of my characters had to sing a song, and I was only slightly terrified, and I think it went pretty well. Which is good, particularly because I'm shortly playing Mr Peachum in a singthrough of the Threepenny Opera, and he has quite a lot of songs, some of which are considerably harder, and that might not be the ideal role to be performing for the first time since the Before Times.
Also I am playing the piano accompaniment for somewhere between four and seven of the songs, which is considerably more than I've managed in previous sing-throughs, so even though I've basically bagsied all the easier ones, I feel like I'm actually making a worthwhile contribution.
This singthrough will be part of our long postponed holiday in France which I am looking forward to so very very much. I've been dusting off my language skills, and actually using them to correspond with a chef who's going to come and cook for us one evening. I'm still very far from fluent, but at some point in the last couple of years I've definitely crossed the line to where I am able to do useful things, which is quite pleasing.
I've now been to my new church four times. I really am going to try and write about this at more length soon, but so far I'm enjoying it, and have been made to feel welcome.
I'm getting close to the end of the second year of Encounter, and have just finished writing an assessment on "Grief, Loss, and Mourning as a theme in Spiritual Direction", which hasn't exactly been a bundle of laughs, but has taught me quite a lot. For next year we have to find actual directees to work with as part of our learning process. This is a bit scary, and it suddenly feels quite real, but I feel quite well prepared for it. One of my jobs for the next few weeks is to put together a website so I can start looking for potential directees in my network.
My Bible Study group have now finished working our way through Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction, and started on Early Christian Doctrine and the Creeds. The first chapter was titled "God the Father Almighty", and as well as a whistle-stop tour of basically the first four-hundred years of Christian thought and some that was discarded as heretical along the way, had quite a lot of reflection on gendered concepts of God, which as you might imagine in our group with its one token cishet person led to some pretty fruitful conversations
I went to Oxford the other weekend to catch up with my friend Seph, which was lovely. I was a bit shocked by the extent to which I'd completely forgotten where anything is. Despite living there for the better part of six months, it was almost as though I'd never even visited before
Some other things that involve other people's private stuff so I can't really write about them
Okay, maybe it's not entirely surprising that I am still feeling a little bit short on time and long on things to fill it with.