Sim & Bek's Place

Wow – time flies!

I guess this will be another long post then…
What has happened since the 19^th March 2008?

HA!

What hasn’t happened since 19^th March 2008 is the sensible question. It’s crazy now that I think back over the last 3 weeks. So I’ll try and start at the beginning and plod through until I reach the end or forget things, or both.
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First up on the ranks:
RezFest 2008 March 23-34^th

RezFest is a gospel music festival that was put on in Point Cook by the local council and the local churches network. Music acts like Newsboys, Jars of Clay, Planetshakers and a bunch of others came along for the ride and it was awesome…
Why so important enough to put on here?
Bek’s mum Karen helped organize the whole thing, Bek was a key volunteer leader and I was roped in volunteered to be the official Photographer of the event!
So I pinched Karen’s nice Olympus E500 SLR for a week and researched how to actually take concert photos! I found plenty of articles on techniques, and then set about learning the ins and outs of the camera so I could actually use the techniques properly.
Then came the event over the Sunday and Monday. In total, I’d say I took photos for maybe 10 hours over the two days – I ended up with 1400 photos! That ends up being about…(just working it out)...2.4 photos a minute! Wow – that’s crazy actually!

700 photos a day – I then had to sift through these 700 photos to work out which were the really good ones to get to the organizers and publicists:
- 1000 concert photos
- 250 not blurry ones
- 100 real good ones
- 1:10 ratio, that isn’t too bad I reckon.

Some of my favourites are below:





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Next up:
Guitar Hero March 1^st

My wireless guitar arrived from the USA!!! Obviously this led to a day of constant Guitar Hero and some heavy 80’s rockin’!!!!

PHOTO

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Next:
My birthday(s) April 3-6th

So last Thursday saw my 22^nd birthday come and go.
Bek and I were rudely but amusingly awakened on my birthday at 8am when some friends of ours turned up on our doorstep, banging and ringing the doorbell, with breakfast! Talk about being woken with a start!
That kicked off the day in a good fun way, and it continued on as Bek and I both had the day off!
We headed off to the city to make a special purchase (more about that later) and once parked, wandered up the street and filled 5-6 expired parking meters with some extra time which was kinda fun! Hopefully we helped a few people avoid fines…
After the city we headed home and I played some rockin’ guitar hero again.

On the Friday night we had a big family dinner, Chinese style, and I got my pressie’s so thank you all!
Sunday night then brought the big ‘friends-over’ b’day dinner which consisted of some serious foozball action plus some guitar hero thrown into the mix for good measure. And of course there was amazing food prepared and eaten by many!



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Next:
Liquid Melbourne April 6^th 2008

Well, for those not in the know Bek and I left our previous church in January and headed off on a new adventure. There is a church in the USA (New Jersey) called Liquid Church, some friends of ours are going over there in a month or so to work there for the church, helping to establish an ‘internet campus’. So others around the world can watch the whole service live over the net, kinda cool!
This partnership has led to all sorts of events and as of last Sunday, Liquid Church Melbourne started up in our lounge room!
We are just a ‘small group’ of the church that is based out here in Melbourne, but we are supported and resourced by the main campus in New Jersey.
To help out with this, they bought our group a 160gb Apple TV, which is what Bek and I bought on my birthday in the city. The Apple TV allows us to download their HD video recording of their sermon and watch it here!!
Very cool and exciting stuff!

www.liquidchurch.com for any more info, all welcome!

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And then:
Gibbs April 8^th 2008

And then, after all that, the bad news kicks in.
Last Tuesday morning while I slept, Bek headed out to her car, on her way to school, when she noticed that there had been some chaos in the backyard. Well, I mentioned earlier that being woken on my birthday was pretty crazy; Tuesday morning trumped that well and truly.
Bek came running into the house and all she yelled was, “Simon! It’s Gibbs…” I don’t think I’ve jumped out of bed that quickly in my life.
We headed out to find the worst…his cage on its side and in two pieces, and our little bunny lying about 2 feet away. He had been killed. We aren’t sure how, or why he was still in one piece (thankfully!), but something had clearly attacked him and the cage during the night. We believe it may have been a fox as they’ve been seen around the area…
After a LOT of tears and shock, Bek managed to head off to work to be distracted while I sorted out Gibbs and the backyard. Probably one of the more unpleasant things I’ve had to do recently and a fair amount of sniffles and tears were used up.

It’s still kinda weird; we did our food shop last night and had to scale down our veggie purchases etc. Those kinds of things are still catching us out a bit, but overall we are doing ok. We aren’t planning on getting another one at the moment.

This is the last decent photo we have of him – on his ‘birthday’ 17^th March.



RIP Gibbs....



So that's what has happened! STACKS!