ah. holidays.

people usually ask "are you going away somewhere?"

while i admit i have a somewhat misguided passion for travel, the answer is mostly "no".

but being at home the last couple of days, post-christmas, post-shopping-blitz-trauma, post-stressful-running-around-december-nightmare, i've been having a lovely time doing...nothing. well, not nothing exactly, but nothing i am required to do.

reading is a huge luxury, i find. i tend to read late at night in bed mostly, so hiding away in a quiet spot with a book in the middle of the day is a great indulgence. everything has to stop, i need to devote myself entirely to the book at hand (or else i read each paragraph five times and still retain nothing).

pottering is another underrated indulgence. getting up late. reading the paper. roaming around the house. tinkering on the piano. making ice cream. rearranging furniture (don't ask me why, but it's some sort of therapy, i'm sure of it). having vague flashes of inspiration and actually letting them unspool in my mind.

one more week of nothingness. bliss.

here i am in canberra, our nation's capital, at a conference. we have around 750 students spread out over four colleges, doing a number of activities, and coming up to us every so often with questions little and big. yesterday i ate breakfast in ten minutes, went into the office at 8.00am, had a 15 minute lunch and dinner, and went out of the office at 11.00pm. my legs are very sore...

given that kind of day, it's interesting to note the various approaches when people have a problem with something. they will either be apologetic and say "you guys are doing great work, we really appreciate it" or they will be belligerent and inconsiderate, behaving as though they are the only people in the universe and we are here to cater specifically to them. not so unusual you might say, particuarly if you work in a 'customer service industry'. but the problem here is that all the students are Christians.

someone once said to me that as Christians we tend to hold other Christians to a higher standard, that we expect more of their behaviour and maybe overlook the fact that they are human and therefore flawed. maybe so, on some occasions, but in this instance i expect people, Christians or not, to be aware that when there are 749 other people around they might have to, i don't know, stand in line and wait...

tired. soooo tired. going to have dinner now. pasta bake. mmmmm.....

it's still hot. and the smell of burning is stronger. 30 fires starting within the space of one hour this afternoon. i just wish it would rain. everything needs a wash, a drink, a bit of dampening. the long since vacated spider webs need to be washed out of the eaves, the crumbly dry earth needs to be saturated, dust and grit needs to be scrubbed away.

and this is just living in the city, where i don't make my living off the land and i am nowhere near a potentially explosive national park or bushland. where i still have as much water as i need when i turn on the tap and i am not sitting around watching my farm turn to dust and my animals wither and die.

i wish it would rain.