Today was technically a working day in my office, but I took a day’s leave.  And I’m glad I did.

I had a nice lazy start to the day, then went to the climbing centre.  Did some top roping and then some lead roping.  I love top roping because I can do silly things (like jump to grab a hold) knowing that if I miss, nothing bad will happen.  I love lead roping because it scares me and I know I need to be scared every now and again.

Then I got a haircut.  There’s something nice about shiny coiffed hair, and something about the way they dry it which is irrepeatable,  so for one day only I get that “just stepped out of a salon” look.

Then I met my brother and his wife for dinner.  Its always fun to catch up with them, and they were on good form.

Then I went to the church ceilidh.  There were a lot of people there that I knew, and a lot of international students that I’d never met before.  And I was REALLY impressed with the international students for their willingness to give it a go and learn new dances.

And then there was a strange game which gave me the opportunity to do a handstand.  And starting the year upside down is probably exactly right somehow.

Bring on 2009!

I love variety, and I love having lots of things to do. This Sunday took that to a new extreme. I think I may be the only person in the entire universe, EVER, to have experienced all these things in one day..

Sunday morning: church. Sounds normal, until I mention that there was a bouncy castle (a small one) and the entire congregation was asked to walk around the church and then shout “oi!” and watch the walls fall down. (An illustration for the battle of Jericho, of course..)

Sunday afternoon: lunch with a friend. This was entirely normal, and very nice too.

Sunday afternoon: aerial skills. Learned how to do a basic drop on the silks, which is a very cool feeling. (ie one minute you’re hanging upside down, the next minute you’ve dropped several feet but you’re still very secure and still upside down) . Also did a toe climb on the rope which is kind of cool but leaves a strange sensation between the toes…

Sunday evening: a hip hop gig. Signed up for this with only the vaguest idea of what hip hop is. And to my surprise, enjoyed it. It was a group called “Ugly Duckling”. Very likeable people who don’t take themselves too seriously. AND who hand out free beer.

And THEN just because it was there, we wandered in on the burlesque cabaret evening which was happening in the same venue. Now that was bright and colourful but a bit on the weird side and not quite my kind of thing.

So all in all, a fun-packed and varied day!

We had a pancake party at church tonight, which involved a quiz.  Quizzes aren’t usually my thing as generally I don’t know anything much when it comes to trivia, music or TV.  For this quiz I ended up in a fairly random team with some people I know well, some people I know a little bit, and a couple of people I’d never met before.  An unlikely mixture.

Good things that happened:

- pancakes (mmm)

- unlikely team worked together very well

- I knew one answer that nobody else did (a very rare occurence!)

- we WON!

- prize was a large bar of fair-trade chocolate EACH

- one girl said she’d never EVER before been in a group that had every won anything, so it made her day!