A change of plans

May 29, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
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Trusting your memory can be a dangerous thing.

I was in the middle of cooking dinner last night when the phone rang. No, it wasn’t a telemarketer. It was someone who serves with me on the committee of a community organisation.

We had a training night scheduled to start at six o’clock and it was already a few minutes past six. She was ringing to see if I was planning to be there. It had completely slipped my mind.

I quickly handed over the dinner making duties to Pauline, got changed, jumped into Pauline’s car and headed off to the training session. I wasn’t too late.

The training was interesting and very worthwhile. Thankfully it wasn’t a particularly late night.

The hardest part was getting my mind into training mode. I was still in dinner making mode.

Do you ever have that experience? Have you had to unexpectedly slip from one mindset to another?

I think the hardest part is when your mind and body are getting set to go through the normal evening activities and beginning to wind down, then suddenly you have to be on the ball once again.

As for preventing a similar situation, I guess I’m going to have to rely more on my diary and less on my aging memory.

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Why do you blog?

May 28, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
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Hazelblackberry of A Bex and a Good Lie Down has tagged me. Well, she actually tagged me some days ago and I did promise to post that day but it didn’t happen. Sorry.

It’s now up to me to give you five reasons as to why I blog. Hmmm.

1. I enjoy writing.

2. I enjoy the sense of community blogging creates.

3. I love the fact that I’ve met so many interesting people, both online and in person, through blogging.

4. Writing helps me to formulate, shape and distill my own thoughts.

5. Being a naturally shy person, putting my thoughts out into cyberspace takes me out of my comfort zone.

I could come up with several more reasons but the meme asks for five and five you have.

Hazelblackberry tagged five people and Carol, who tagged her, only nominated one person. I suppose that means it’s open to me to decide how to proceed.

I think I’ll open it up to everyone. If you’re a blogger, please take a few moments to consider why you blog. You may have answered the question some time ago but can I encourage you to look at it again and see if you’re still blogging for the same reasons?

Jot down five reasons that you blog, either in the comments section of this post or on your own blog.

If you’re a blog reader, but you’ve chosen not to publish your own blog, I’d love to get your perspective on this one. Would you take the time to write five reasons that you don’t blog in the comments section of this post?

I look forward to some answers from bloggers and non-bloggers.

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Grumpy Old Women

May 28, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
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I know that they don’t look very grumpy … but they are.

One of the things I love about my job is the range of people that I get to talk to. This morning I had the opportunity to chat to Linda Robson and Jenny Éclair who are currently in Perth for Grumpy Old Women Live.

We chatted about the hit BBC television programme that launched the show and I asked them what makes them grumpy about Australia.

They were very complimentary about our land down under and couldn’t find too much to complain about here ….. until Jenny remembered seeing some of our morning television.

She doesn’t mind the programmes but she found it a bit odd when it came to a very long advertisement about a ladder. I suggested that it’s a very good ladder but she wasn’t convinced.

Jenny Éclair is a comedian, actress, novelist and radio presenter. Although I’d never seen any of her work before the Grumpy Old Women TV show, I immediately warmed to her in that programme and so I was thrilled that she was able to drop in to our studios.

Linda Robson will celebrate 40 years in show business in January next year and is perhaps best known for her role as Tracey Stubbs in the BBC series Birds of a Feather. Pauline and I were big fans of Birds of a Feather so it was a real honour to meet Linda.

If you’d like to hear what the Grumpy Old Women had to say just click the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.



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Thank you

May 28, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
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I mentioned last week that the National Day of Thanksgiving was set down for last Saturday in Australia. It was a day to say thank you to those who have made our lives and our communities better.

When Life Skills Trainer, Jill Bonanno, joined me on 98.5 Sonshine FM for our regular Friday morning radio segment, Simply Living, we gave listeners the opportunity to call in and express their thanks for various people. We also talked about the benefits of being thankful rather than looking at the negatives of life all the time.

You can hear our discussion by clicking here.

I wonder why you’re thankful today?

I’m incredibly thankful for my wife Pauline. She is beautiful in so many ways. I’m constantly amazed and humbled by the fact that such a wonderful person would choose to spend their life with me.

Having kids like Emily and James would be enough to make anyone thankful. They truly are an amazing blessing and they constantly teach me so much about life.

I’m very thankful for our extended family. It’s wonderful to have people on both sides of our family that we know we can depend upon. Our church family is also rock solid and dependable.

Turning up for work each day is an amazing privilege. I’m extremely thankful for my job. There are seasons in life, and I may not be here forever, but at the moment I couldn’t imagine working anywhere else.

There’s so much more to be thankful for, not the least of which is my friendship with the creator of the universe.

What about you? Are you able to name the things in your life that cause you to be thankful? I’d love to hear about the things that create a sense of gratitude in your life. Please note a few of them in the comments section of this post or write a post for your own blog.



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Losing a shared experience

May 27, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
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Television programming is a curious thing. There are nights when there’s nothing worth watching and others where all the good stuff’s on at the same time.

We refuse to watch the best of a bad selection. We’d rather just turn the television off.

Of course that’s where video recording works its magic. (That’s right. Video. We haven’t moved into hard drive recording yet.) On the really good nights we can watch one show and record another. That gives us some good programming for the dud nights.

This raises problems of its own. Do you ever watch a programme you videoed some time back and want to talk about it the next day?

If we’ve taped a show and then finally get to see it weeks or even months later it’s hard to remember that not everyone watched it at the same time. We get so used to saying, “Did you see such and such last night?” that you almost forget that you were watching an old programme that everyone else saw three months ago. It’s almost like some kind of weird time travel.

It’s a problem that will only get bigger. More and more people are downloading programming to watch whenever they choose, or watching DVDs. Our viewing habits are changing forever.

Is talking about last night’s viewing over the office water cooler becoming a thing of the past? Are we on the verge of losing a shared experience? Does that mean we’ll have to start talking about things that really matter when we get to work in the morning?

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