Day: February 15, 2006

What a day!

Scan of GNER tickets

This morning

The things they don’t teach you at theological college, part 134: What to do with dead ants in the consecrated wine. I don’t think I had any other option, I poured the wine into the earth outside and started again.

This afternoon

I visited the renal (kidney) clinic today for my sixth monthly check-up (only this visit should have been in November and for various reasons I’ve not gone until now). Anyway, it was both reassuring (because I saw a lovely doctor who really listened to me! I felt listened to; I can’t tell you how important that was) and also worrying (because I had the highest recorded blood pressure (BP) reading I’ve ever had: 180/96! — it should be about 140/60 ish, I think).

Anyway, I’ve been told quite firmly that I need to focus on getting my BP down. A losing some weight wouldn’t be a bad thing too. If I can get a less stressful job with clearer boundaries then all the better, because this job appears to be slowly killing me. And that wasn’t just a figure of speech!

The good news, however, is that I got some good reading done in the waiting room. Liminality, there’s a word I’ve not read in a book for a while. But that’s neither here nor there.

This evening

This evening we had a ministry team meeting: three hours of rotas, after an hour of fine food, fine company and good chat.

Tomorrow

We’re off to London on the 08:00 GNER train to Kings Cross, en route to visiting the incredible Steve Lawson and the lovely TSP (ask Steve!).

I may blog while we’re away; I may not. I may just take a break and return here next week. (But knowing me, I probably will!)

PS My email server is down just now, so I probably won’t be able to access that either until I’m back in Edinburgh. If it’s urgent: sorry.

Saints and Festivals of the Scottish Episcopal Church for MS Outlook

Screenshot of Outlook Calendar showing saints\' days
Screenshot of Outlook showing saints’ days and festivals imported into the Calendar.

Better late than never! I’ve finally got around to typing up the Scottish Episcopal Church saints’ days and festivals in a format that can easily be imported into the Microsoft Office Outlook Calendar.

Please feel free to download this file and follow the simple, illustrated instructions on how to import it into Microsoft Office Outlook.

Download

(Right-click and select Save Link As….)

  • Saints’ Days and Festivals of the Scottish Episcopal Church Calendar, from Advent 2005 to The Last Sunday in Pentecost (Christ the King) 2006 (CSV, 23 KB)

Please note:

  1. Back-up: Make sure you back-up your Outlook .PST file before you import. (I recommend that you use the Personal Folders Backup application which works for Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002 XP and 2003.)
  2. Illustrations: All illustrations show Microsoft Office Outlook 2003; details may vary slightly for older copies of Outlook. This does not work for Microsoft Outlook Express, which is an email application and does not offer calendar functions.
  3. Accuracy: Details are as far as possible correct, although a few errors may have crept in in the production of this file (for example in how translated (moved) minor festivals have been scheduled). It was produced for my own personal use, but I’ve also decided to release it into the public domain. Feel free to use and/or adapt it to your own use. The file can be edited in Microsoft Office Excel (or other spreadsheet, eg OpenOffice.org.
  4. Dates only: This file does not contain details of the readings for each day, only the name of the festival.
  5. Enjoy!

1. File > Import and Export …

Screenshot from Outlook 2003 of File, Import and Export

Open Microsoft Outlook, and from the File menu select Import and Export…

2. Import and Export Wizard

Import and Export Wizard

The Import and Export Wizard window will open. Select Import from another program or file, then click Next >.

3. Select Comma Separated Values (Windows)

Comma Separated Values (Windows) is selected=

Select Comma Separated Values (Windows) from the list, and click Next >.

4. Locate the CSV file to import

Import a File window

You will now be prompted to Import a File. Click the Browse … button and locate the file you downloaded called ChurchDates2006.csv, once selected click Next >.

5. Select Calendar under your Personal Folders

Select destination folder

Now select the destination folder from those listed under your Outlook Personal Folders. You want to select Calendar, and then click Next >.

6. Confirm and click Finish

Confirmation screen

You will be presented with a confirmation screen, similar to the one above. Make sure that the details are correct — and if you need to, check that the Map Custom Fields… settings are correct (by default, they should be). Click Finish to begin importing the details into your Outlook Calendar.

7. Import is in progress

Import and Export Progress bar

Outlook will begin to import the information into your Outlook Calendar, showing you its progress (as above).

8. It’s done

Screenshot of Outlook Calendar showing saints\' days

Once complete, you’ll find that details of all the Scottish Episcopal Church saints’ days, festivals and Sundays, from Advent 2005 – The Last Sunday of Pentecost (Chrirst the King) 2006, have been added as all-day events to Outlook.

Visitors

Jane, Benjamin and Jenni standing in front of the fireplace in our house in Cellardyke.
Jane, Benjamin and Jenni standing in front of the fireplace in our house in Cellardyke.

Yesterday my sister Jenni and her son Benjamin travelled up from Selkirk, and visited our house in Cellardyke for the first time. I can hardly believe that given we’ve had the house for over 15 months now Jenni and Benjamin had never seen it!

It was the final day of Benjamin’s mid-term break and we wanted to help make it a bit special for him. So having had a meeting in town at 09:00 I hung around and met them off the bus at St Andrew’s Square.

It was a fairly productive ‘hanging around’ though: I bought a new hat at Millets, and had this exchange with a shop assistant there:

Me: I’ve got a new hobby: losing hats. I’ve lost two in the last few months.

Shop assistant: Well, at least you’re approaching your new hobby with a certain degree of enthusiasm.

Jenni had also asked me to check out the WH Smith (newsagent) at Waverley as she’d had a tip-off (from Forbidden Planet) that I might find the latest collector’s edition Marvel Spiderman comic (#135) there, which Benjamin was looking for. It wasn’t. But (a) I did bump into a friend, Suz, outside Waverley, which was cool; and (b) I found the comic at the WH Smith at St Andrew’s Square Bus Station, just as Jenni and Benjamin arrived.

Meeting up with Jane at home — who was sporting a new, shorter and coloured hair style (see photo above) — we sped off to Cellardyke. After a spot of lunch, Jane, Jenni and Benjamin set about putting the house to rights in preparation for guests from Interhome this coming weekend. Meanwhile, I put together a CSV file of all the Scottish Episcopal Church saints’ days and festivals for merging into MS Outlook. Which will be my next post, when I return from the 11:00 am Eucharist this morning.