Last night we finally received our copies of the newly released Orthodox Study Bible, complete with Old and New Testaments. This book has felt like ages in coming (I think when i first heard of its development, it was slated for a 2005 release), but the end product is worth it and kudos to all who worked on it.

I am a little surprised at the thinness of the Bible; i was expecting it to be much much bigger. It seems they managed to trim the size down by making each page the thickness of exactly 3 atoms. I joke of course, but the pages are really thin, and sometimes it can get annoying as the text from the other side of the page can make the words a little difficult to read.

Last night was the FA Cup final, and Portsmouth ended up winning a dreary affair 1-0. It wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as last year's game, and it was good to see a game of live football on free-to-air television, although the commentary from Mark Bosnich as absolutely nauseating. How the heck an ex-coke addict can get a job calling a FA Cup final is absolutely beyond me, hopefully SBS will come to their senses and restore the Martin Tyler commentary next season.

I resumed playing indoor today, as we lost 4-2. I didn't play particularly well, i really need to work on my fitness. On that note, recently we purchased a cheapish elliptical to accomplish just that purpose (plus to try and shed a few kilos too).

Work over the past week has been a bit testing. The server at one of the company's office in regional northern-New South Wales failed, which has involved us totally replacing the thing, and honestly it hasn't gone too smoothly. I also did the monthly network maintenance on the weekend as well, so i'm a little worked-out at the moment (but the IT Manager was the one who had to drive down there and physically replace the server!(poor him))

On Sunday we had the wedding of some friends who have been going out for the past 10+ years, so most of us were like 'finally!' when they actually got engaged last year.

The ceremony itself was interesting for many reasons. The bride is a daughter of a Serbian priest, so there were actually four priests partaking in the service which was the first with that many i've seen. Also, because of the mix of Greek and Serbian priests it meant that the ceremony was actually performed in a combination of Greek, English and Serbian.

The Serbian was especially interesting, and hearing the 'Christos Anesti' (Christ is Risen) sung in Serbian was a treat. The ceremony itself felt like a priest tag-team as each took their turn and the microphone was swapped around.

The reception was at Custom's House that night in the City. To my great surprise it was a really small affair (only about 80 people at my count, which left me wondering how Des and I actually scored an invite, but appreciated nonetheless). It was actually quite refreshing; i don't think i've been to a reception with such few people.

Honestly, i've got to say that it's one of the best reception's i've been to for a wedding. If i could use two words to describe it: intimate and classy. The food was amazing, but the highlight for me was the music. There was no DJ, no band; the only music for much of the reception was solely a string trio.

As a bit of background, i love a bit of classical music, and the string trio at the reception whilst eating the great food in the wonderful setting of the 100+ year old Custom's House building was absolutely heavenly. There were several times where i felt like exclaiming to the other people at our table 'Would you please shut the heck up so i can listen to this wonderful music?!!'.

Thankfully i restrained myself, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable night. There was Serbian and Greek dancing later on in the night (it was quite a transition from classical strings to Serbian dance), and the shots of a home-made Balkan drink, Rakia, that was offered to all the guests by the Serbian parents is a story in itself. At our table we called the stuff 'Rocket Fuel', mainly because i swear it had a alcoholic content of at least 60%. I think my stomach lining is still healing.

The only downer was that as it was on a Sunday night, because of work the next day we couldn't stay out as late as we would have liked to and had to leave a bit early.

So comes an end to a long weekend (today is May/Labour Day in Queensland). As you can probably tell from the title we ended up doing a fair bit. We saw two movies, attended a wedding, and attended two birthday parties.

We started the weekend by seeing Forgetting Sarah Marshall on Friday night. Although it wasn't as funny as I was expecting it to be, i still enjoyed the movie nonetheless. I think Despina will be watching How I Met Your Mother in a different light from now on after witnessing the all-too-frequent full-frontal nudity of the movie's star, Jason Segel.

On Saturday we went to a friend's wedding and attended the subsequent reception at the Greek Club afterwards. I've got to say: darn i'm getting sick of attending receptions at the Greek Club. We've got another wedding next weekend, and I sure am glad that the reception for that won't be at the Greek Club.

Yesterday I played football in the afternoon, us winning the game 2-1 but we really should have buried the game long before full time as we had so many chances, including a missed penalty. I rolled my right ankle whilst goalkeeping in the final few minutes, which is quite sore today.

After that we went to a teppanyaki for my sister-in-law's birthday. It was my first time going to a teppanyaki restaurant, but it was pretty good, although somewhat expensive: the chef was awesome, and the food was good.

Following that we went to a very busy Southbank Cinemas and saw Iron Man. Robert Downy Jr. was awesome in the lead role, and overall it was a great movie. You can really tell the difference between this Marvel financed and produced movie compared to those mainly run by the film studios (e.g. the very crap Spiderman 3 and alike).

The only downers for me was the casting of Gwyneth Paltrow (i can't stand Gwyneth Paltrow, and I thought she was the weak link in the movie), and also the pace of the movie which i felt was a bit slow.

Today we went to our nephew's first birthday party, and that's really about it. It's back to work tomorrow, but a bit late because a tech from Telstra is coming around in the morning to have a look at our cable, as our internet was playing up a fair bit lately (but of course since i made the tech booking it's been fine. Coincidence?).

I've just completed a small change to the blog script: i've retooled the CAPTCHA image for the comments form to make it a bit more robust.

I've done this change mainly because there have been a fair few spam comments in the past few weeks that have made it past the previous one. Strangely enough, it's been over two months now since there has been an actual legitimate comment on this blog, which has to be some kind of record since i started blogging. Have i become less provocative, or is the one person that actually commented regularly now too busy to? (you know who you are )

Anywho, the new CAPTCHA is now much more accessible too: it has a refresh/regenerate button to get a new image if you can't read the one displayed (so you don't have to refresh the entire page), as well as an audible playback option which will generate a sound file 'saying' the displayed code.

Overall it's a great improvement, but more importantly I hope it'll keep the friggin spam off the comments.

Give it a go and let me know what you think, and please definitely let me know if there are any bugs.

Christ Is Risen!

So goes another Easter. After being sick for a bit of Holy Week last year, it was good to make it to all the evening services as well as the Good Friday morning service this year.

Having Friday off from work (ANZAC day public holiday) was a fantastic help in terms of just recovering from working for 8+ hours each day and then being at Church for 1.5-3+ hours each night. I think for future years i'm definitely going to take Good Friday off on leave if it isn't already a holiday.

In this past week i've also added some photos of my Star Wars collection to the gallery. See it here, but this one's a private album so you will need the usual friends username and password (if you've forgotten it or don't have it, shoot me an email).

We also played football this arvo against a very - and also somewhat humourously - organised Korean team. They were so professional that all of them were wearing the same jerseys, the same socks, and i'm pretty sure also the same boots. That, and plus they had what looked like a team photographer with them with a sizable digital SLR and had an arranged team photo before the game.

I felt a little disappointed that we didn't exchange mini-banners while shaking hands with children dressed in the same jerseys from both teams with the referee tossing a coin before thousands of people. I jest of course, but it was pretty strange seeing that before a casual neighbourhood indoor competition game.

They were a really good team though, and although in the second half we fought back to level the game 3-3, we ended up losing the game 6-3.

Also, i love this new Nike ad (not only because it's Arsenal featured): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H548YEfbO-k.

I had a similar type of moment in the indoor game today: I was the last defender, and in attempting to block a shot on goal I slid in on the player only for him to totally own me and flick the ball around me as i slid in, and as i was on the ground I rolled over just to see the ball shooting into the goal, and then the ball came back out of the net and rolled right next to where i was lying.