it's amazing how times have changed. and haven't changed.

during my "oh yes i had a blog" excitement from a month or so ago, i ambled my way through past posts and came upon one from march 2004.*

here's a snippet.

"i have THE coolest brother and sister in the world. no, seriously. SERIOUSLY. note the capitals. and note that i never use capitals. that must mean something.

here i am on one side of the world, sitting at my computer in utter despair on saturday morning (belgium time) as i cannot figure out how excel works and how to get little graphs to graph stuff that needs to be graphed.

and there is my wonderful brother on the other side of the world, sitting at his computer on saturday night (nz time), about to save my life.

i send him my little excel file. he opens it. there we both are. opposite sides of the earth. in front of two computers. looking at the same data.

then he proceeds, via msn (a simply marvelous lifesaving contraption), to tell me step by step how to make graphs. he says things like 'okay, now highlight these columns, and then press this button'. i follow his instructions. when i get it wrong, i.e. what i end up having on my screen is nothing like what he has on his screen, he figures out what i did. and how to fix it. then he proceeds to say things like 'hang on, let me see, i think this might look even better' and takes me through a different range of instructions that gets me a different graph.

...

and then there's my sister. also very cool. who just saved me about 20 hours of work. literally.

i have these numbers in a table that was created in this programme i use. the numbers have decimal points. with a '.' point like is used in new zealand. however belgium have this weird system where they use the comma instead of the point in excel. i needed the data in excel to make graphs. so i thought i had to go through and change every decimal point into a comma so that excel recognised it as a decimal. this probably makes no sense. oh well. the point is (ha ha ha, the point. get it? obviously you can tell i'm tired and have spent far too long on this computer when i start making jokes like that!) that i have 35 tables, each with 50 rows of numbers and i was going through one table at a time, converting each decimal point to a comma, on every single row. this takes a long time (hence the bad jokes).

rachel came online. i sent her one of the tables and she said she would see what she could do. two minutes later (yep, only two, actually probably not even that to be honest) and she had the solution. man. now it takes me one second, one button, and suddenly all my points are commas..."


there are two key things about this post. one of these things highlights how times have changed. one highlights how things haven't changed.

thing that has changed: technology.
1: msn chat? i don't think i have opened msn in at least 5 years. i'm not saying it doesn't exist. some people use it all the time, but not me. i now use google chat and facebook chat.
2: sending, downloading, opening and editing files whilst explaining what you are doing? how about google docs! oh how that would have helped back then!

thing that hasn't changed: coolness of brother and sister.
1: sister: my sister recently posted about blog comments and the idea that facebook commenting is so much easier than blogger commenting.** she then set her blog up with facebook commenting. i marveled at this fact and decided to copy her. i tried. i really did. but after getting stuck on the first bullet point in the instructions i turned to my brother (this time via google chat).
2: brother: my brother then proceeded to have a play and explain a few bits and pieces and presto! now you can comment just like on facebook. it'll even appear in your newsfeed. give it a go. i dare you.

oh yes, one other thing that hasn't changed? my lack of capital letter usage.

*original post
**rachel's post

this post shall be entitled: an ode to cats.

i'm a big fan of cats. they've been a part of my life since i was two years old. so let's have a chat about them.

simon - a rather wise tabby cat who, when faced with a tall thin glass containing milk, understood enough physics to dip his paw in, swish it around, bring it out, lick, and repeat. also known as sugarhead because one day i was making myself a nice cold milo and i accidentally dropped a spoon of wet sugary milo mix onto his head, where it hardened and remained for a number of days.

fluffy - the king of the block with a fluffed up tail and fluffed up body and fluffed up head (i named him after these affectionate features) who would climb trees with me as a kid. often said by another family member to not be as intelligent as simon - until said family member had a dream of fluffy at night walking on his back paws saying "you don't know what i get up to at night".

tigger - a kitten who thought she was a dog. suppose this is understandable as we brought her home at the same time as our puppy macgyver.

picasso - elegantly able to chase her tail and foot around in circles to this day. named due to unique colouring and a brushstroke like mark on her nose. would bring me a bird a day for about a week every time i got home from an overseas trip. i understood her heart was in the right place. but i still got dad to clean up the mess.

phoenix - adequately described by my father in a text message whilst cat-sitting "dad slept like a lamb. mum was attacked all night by a marauding lioness." phoenix loves to chase ping pong balls up and down the hall, tries to follow us on every walk we go on, and is terribly addicted to jellymeat. her favourite flavours are jellified yuck, stinklicious lamb, gross beef (correctly labelled as: duck, lamb and roast beef.

phoenix has another skill. she likes to fly in her spare time.


thanks meg for the pic.

for those of you who noticed, i've rediscovered my blog. and in doing so, had a bit of a virtual walk down memory lane. mostly it caused me to laugh out loud. which made me ponder writing more regularly. so that i can have more walks and laughs down the virtual memory lane in the future.

this reminds me about what my sister called a "mindtrap" back in the 80s. a mindtrap quite simply is when you think about doing something and then realise you are thinking about doing something, knowing that when you actually do that something, then you will remember back to thinking about doing it and thinking about thinking about doing it. and this causes a mindtrap. pretty ingenious. i think the matrix copied our idea later.

anyway, so me thinking about writing my blog purely for the purpose of being able to read it in the future and think back to this moment of thinking about writing it is a mindtrap. but a good one, because now when i re-read this blog in ten years i will laugh and remember, possibly quite vividly, writing this anecdote.

phew. new paragraph required to delete mindtrap traps.

i pondered starting up a new one. a new blog i mean. not mindtrap. you know. mentioning eric. and caleb. and phoenix the cat. in the title. but then i decided they could just join me on my one. especially because i'm writing it anyway. as a slight aside - do i use full stops too much? maybe i should start thinking about alternative methods of punctuation. not sure. i like the full stop.

so. i started this in 2003 when i was a mere 22 year old heading to europe to start my masters. i guess it was a travel blog back then. to keep folk back home updated on my life. remember this was a time long before facebook. and now? well i don't know what it will become. time will tell. things i do know:

(a) i will be writing it
(b) i will be reading it
(c) other people might read it

let's see what happens eh?

i used to send out a yearly excerpt.
maybe you will remember them.
if so, it means you knew me quite a long time ago.*
then one year i forgot.
and the pattern was lost.
so.
here's me trying to start up a new tradition once again.

2011 - the new adventures of bex + eric + caleb**

bex: status updates...***
before the year began: a wife for four years to my wonderful husband eric
at the start: a classical studies / geography teacher, in charge of the environmental council and assistant dean in charge of pastoral and academic needs of 350 students at pakuranga college
part way through: involved in church activities at eastview baptist including preaching, running creche and helping organise a family camp
towards the end: becoming a mum on september 1st to caleb merriman jeffery (4.8kg)
at the end: working for nzqa, hosting my canadian family and writing a yearly excerpt in bullet point format

eric: status updates:
before the year began: a husband for four years to my wonderful wife bex
at the start: an english teacher, professional learning coach focussing on digital technology, and in charge of boys' football at pakuranga college
part way through: involved in church activities at eastview baptist including worship leading and helping organise a family camp
towards the end: becoming a dad on september 1st to caleb merriman jeffery (10lb10oz)
at the end: given a promotion to become an assistant dean in 2012 at school, hosting my canadian family and letting bex write this yearly excerpt in bullet point format

caleb: status updates:
before the year began: living inside mum
at the start: growing bigger inside mum
part way through: growing very large inside mum
towards the end: being born on september 1st via emergency c-section due to size
at the end: 4 months old and smiling and laughing a lot

the three of us wish you all the very best for 2012 and maybe we will attempt to keep up this tradition for the years to come... if any of these bullet points appeal to you and you want to know more - leave a comment!

much love,
bex, eric and caleb****


*hello to all of you!
**obviously it's new because it's not just bex anymore
***i'd just like to take this opportunity to state that i am pretty positive i was one of the very first kiwis ever to use facebook (thanks meghan jeffery for the invite when it was opened to the world in 2006)
****actually caleb has no idea i'm writing this but i shall include him in the credits regardless (actually i wrote eric's part as well)

this post shall be entitled: the ancient world of the mediterranean beckons.

about a month ago i was awarded a staff scholarship in which to travel to the mediterranean to:

a) re-inspire my own passion for the topics i teach in classical studies
b) look into field trip possiblities for my students in the future
c) create resources for my department

so eric and i have booked our journey that takes us in january:

from auckland to turkey (istanbul, anzac cove and troy)
from turkey to italy (rome, naples, pompeii, cumae)
from italy to greece (athens, delphi, thebes, corinth, olympia)
from greece to turkey and back to auckland

i am looking forward to:
a) travelling back to the land of aeneas & paris, romulus & claudius, socrates & exekias...
b) eating real greek food again
c) showing eric my favourite destination of all time (he's never been to the mediterranean)
d) being immersed in archaeological sites

so thanks pakuranga college for giving me a scholarship!

the good samaritan

my first sermon: sunday 29th august 2010

this post shall be entitled: a diary through the ages.

9 years old: kept a diary of places i visited in canada. mostly wrote about animals i saw and mini golf games i played. occasionally mentioned place names. always mentioned newly bought soft toys.

12 years old: kept a lockable diary (though i don't recall ever locking it, or having a key for that matter) that discussed my last year of intermediate school and a trip around the south island with family and friends. discovered that if i had run out of things to say, it was worthwhile to fill up the page with long descriptions about what happened on the tv show neighbours that night.

along with this - many letters received from my cousin in nelson - each one with a word count because apparantly i counted my words first and then encouraged her that at least as many words needed to be written in return.

13 - 17 years old: my high school years have been neatly recorded day by day explaining what subjects i did at school, boys i liked, and tv show anecdotes focussing particularly on lois and clark. mostly i theorise about boys. this seemed normal.

also recently discovered - hundreds of letter written by fellow classmates - each of which clearly indicated i had written a letter twice as long to them and they felt compelled to reply.

18 - 22 years old: university diaries upgraded to large books with no set amount of writing needed for each day. this meant i could ramble on for pages on one particular day, and skip a day if nothing was worth pondering. i did a lot of pondering it seems. a lot. i feel like if one day the world collapsed and my diaries were the only artefact of life as we know it - people would learn a lot about how indecisive and complex we really are.

emails became the 'in' thing and it seems i wanted to be 'in'. thousands of emails ranging in topic and length remind me that i had a knack for story-telling and capturing moments with exact detail.

23 - 26 years old: as i headed overseas i decided to not only continue my written diary format but to embark on my first ever 'blog' - yes, this one in fact. the diary writing went well and i have pages of excerpts about trips to greece and italy, how i lived in a little european town called leuven and how i met eric to name a few. but the blog option intrigued me. and i had a lot of followers once upon a time. a way to share my adventures in one hit - for the world to see and comment on.

26 years & counting: then i got married. and for some reason all diary entries - both written in books and typed online - have ended. it's quite easy to note why as i now have someone i share my adventures with on a daily basis. writing a diary was just a way to have a conversation with myself - to clear my head - and now i have a very patient husband who plays the role perfectly.

so. what came next? facebook. twitter. and soon another unknown technological step in recording life stories for people to see.