Mike Rutter’s Weblog…….

Its Sunday and we are having a lazy morning… Matt is playing Toontown and Joel is playing Donkey Kong on the Wii. Beth is watching Cbeebies whilst Uncle Dan snores on the sofa next to her. Pip is just about to go for a run and I am listening to the new Kings of Leon album whilst writing this. The house needs tidying, but it can wait for a few more minutes……

Last week we had an inspection at school. We did well and have come through it with a good report. The problem now will be how to maintain momentum for the rest of the term, it feels as though we should be on holiday now! Its harvest next week and then it won’t be long before we start thinking about Christmas…good grief!

The kids are growing up (it happens). Joel is loving football now – he goes every Saturday to training in his Hull City strip (Matthew has one now as well). Its funny to see Joel so into it now as he wasn’t at all interested when he was younger. We’re looking forward to today’s game against Spurs – could be a London double Matt is enjoying school – he was ‘Star of the Week’ last week and his certificate is blu tacked in pride of place in the kitchen. Bethany continues to enjoy nursery. She loves our new hamster called Snowy and insists on saying good night to her every bedtime. This routine finishes with her hugging the cage and blowing Snowy a kiss.

I have started back on my course. It is no longer called NOC, it is now the Yorkshire Ministry Course or YMC. They have just appointed a new principal, Christine Gore, she seems really good and I am optimistic about the next two years on the course. I’ve got to sort out another placement pretty soon and am looking at spending time with a few examples of Pioneering Church (new expressions of church for those that don’t fit into the traditional model of doing church). I particularly like the look of what Ben Norton is doing out in Bridlington, with his group that meets in the pub to discuss current issues in the context of the Christian faith. He calls it ‘Man church for unchurched men’. It has been receiving some good publicity recently and is worth checking out.

Well – need to get dressed – will post again soon…..

I really want to go and see this. I saw a trailer for it at the Bradford IMAX and it looked fantastic.

My internet is rubbish at the moment. I reached my useage limit so my provider reduced my download speeds. They have never returned to their original speeds ever since, even though I did pay more money. I am not happy! So I decided to bite the bullet and swap providers (not just because of this – I have been thinking about it for a while). To do this I need to swap my telephone line back to BT. Had a lovely chat to a very happy, friendly person at BT who was very pleased to “welcome me back to BT”. Ever since my experine with them has gone downhill. I needed to contact them to cancel an item I had ordered and spent 4 lots of at least 20 minutes being on hold. Their website also went down which also meant I couldn’t contact them that way. One morning I wasted 25 minutes being on hold “your call is very important to us – If you would prefer why don’t you contact us via our easy to use website……”   I finaly hung up on them and rushed to the car so as not to be late for work only to get stuck behind a van driving at 40 in a 60 limit. The company that the van belonged  to? Who else but BT! I finally managed to contact them but now they are holding up my broadband transfer. I am not a happy man…………………………

I have just swapped providers for my webspace which has meant moving this site. In the move I lost a couple of comments. Really sorry if yours was one of them. I will try to copy them over when I can – but if you were one of the people who’s comment has been lost, please post it again if you can. Thanks

 Mike

Went to see Mr Bean today with Joel. Good fun – not amazing but good fun.

Also went to see Bradford Bulls play Leeds Rhinos tonight with Ben & Carl. Great game. Bradford lost but deserved to win – some pretty dodgy refereeing. What amazed me was that I have tended to support Leeds Rhinos but standing amongst all the Bradford supporters I really wanted to support Bradford. You may say “no surprise there” as I probably wanted to avoid a good kicking. But it was more than that – it was wanting to be a part of the crowd. I really wanted to belong rather than to go against. Interesting insight into crowd mentality, especially when you ask the really serious questions about why people in the past have gone along with some of the horrible things that have been done in their countries. The need to belong is very powerful………..

Also had The Biggest Kebab in the World Ever â„¢ just round the corner from the stadium. It was from a place called ‘The Balti Ranch’. It was UNBELIEVABLE the size of kebab they gave me. Just feeing the weight of the thing made me feel full. Anyway – here is a picture of Carl eating his…..the picture doesn’t do it justice.

There are some comments relating to this post in the comments section after the ‘server change’ post. I had to copy them over after I swapped servers………

Well I thought it was about time for a change. I haven’t been very good at updating my webpages recently so I thought that maybe a new look would get me inspired again – who knows if it will last!