Two Groups of Friends

My wife & I (nope, still not used to saying that) have 2 groups of friends. These 2 groups are very different from each other.

One of them is my group of mates that I've known since high school. They're Christian guys (& girls) that go to church every Sunday, don't drink a whole lot, and often helpout with local youth groups etc.

The other group of friends is Tiarnee's group of friends from College. Several times this year we've been to loud obnoxious parties they've hosted, and at different times for different reasons, we've felt let down by them, as I'm sure they have felt the same way about us.

In addition to our wedding presents, both groups of friends decided to give us somthing extra upon moving into our new house. One group brought us a brand-spanking new4 burner BBQ with gas bottle to use it. We'd wanted one to go with our awesome pool and backyard, but could never have afforded one. We were very suprised, humbled and gratefull to receive it.

The other group of friends took their strange version of a joke completely too far. They trashed our house, meaning that I spent the first 2 days in my new and previously spotless house (oh yeah, that I'm renting) with my new wife cleaning.

Yep, if you've read this far, you have probably guessed what happened. The "Christian" friends trashed the house and the "non-Christian" friends brought us the BBQ.

This has raised a whole bunch of questions in my own mind, but the one that baffles me the most is this: Why is it that non-Christian binge-drinking uni students know infinitely more about 'loving thy neighbour' than those who claim to know God?

Good Friday

John 3:16 (New International Version)
16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Today was 'Good Friday'. Enough said.

Bushfire Connection

My only personal connection to the recent and much publicised Victorian Bushfires is that our wedding reception venue, the Horsham Gold Club was destroyed on 'Black Saturday'. Many people don't realise there was a fire at Horsham that day. But there was, and it destroyed 7 houses and the aforementioned Golf Club.

This is what our reception looked like inside:
This is what the Golf Club looked like after the fire:

Our head table was on the other side of these windows:The loss of a Golf Club (or a reception venue) however, is pretty trivial compared to all the other losses that day.

Wedding Photos

Tonight I finally uploaded a selection of the official photos from the wedding. This is just about our favourite one of the lot.


I proposed to Tiarnee under the end of the jetty in the background.

New Template

Ok so I got bored tonight and applied a new template to my blog. Not quite sure why. Especially since the only people that read my blog do so through RSS. Maybe it was because I thought that as I'm a web programmer, I should have a semi-respectable looking blog. I'm also not sure why I'm doing this post to alert all you RSSers (7 of you according to google reader!) as now you will go to the blog to see the new template and then see that it's a work in progress.

Anyways, if you do so despite the above warning you will see I shamelessly downloaded a free template and will eventually finish customising it. Over the next few days you should see dud links removed, new ones added, and better content generally on my page.

Who knows? I may even get around to uploading the official photos of the wedding. Or the photos of our reception venue. Both before and after it was destroyed.

2008: Year in Review

In 2008 I managed to achieve amongst other things, the following (in order):

• Turn 21 & have party.
• Moved interstate into a new flat.
• Learnt that nothing is open in Adelaide when you want it to be open.
• Started a new job in the real world as a 'Graduate Software Engineer' for a web development company.
• I graduated with a Bachelor of Information Technology from the University of Ballarat.
• I joined a new church & home group: Holy Trinity.
• Helped my fiancee plan a wedding.
  
• Took my fiancee on a suprise night out for her 21st.
• Had my bucks weekend in Adelaide. Which consisted of Halo 2, Paintballing, Go-Karting, steak and Ice-Cream.
• Found & moved into a 1890s built 3 bedroom house with Air-con and.... a pool!
• On the 22nd of November I got married to my girfriend of almost 4 years and my fiancee of 16 months, Tiarnee Munn.
• Following that we went on a Honeymoon to Fiji.
• Went on a small holiday just before Christmas to the Yorke Peninsula
• Spend most of Christmas with my wifes family.
• Went to Melbourne and saw the first day of the Boxing Day test match.
• Rocked out New Years Eve to Peter Coombe. Hearing such hits as 'newspaper mama' and 'Juicy, Juicy Green Grass'.

All in all. BEST YEAR EVER.

Can 2009 top that? Time will tell.