105 Things

I'm jumping on the bandwagon here - it seems to be a trend in the blogosphere. (See lists of things about Nixter and Craig, for example). Since I'm having trouble focusing on my work at the moment, I decided to give it a go.

1. I am a PhD student.
2. I need to finish my PhD this year.
3. My scholarship ends in August.
4. I am in the School of History and Philosophy of Science.
5. My PhD is on natural theology in 17th-century England, and how it was related to natural philosophy and theology.
6. I have been interested in science and religion for a very long time.
7. I don't remember when I first got interested in Galileo, but he's now my biggest soapbox.
8. I used to have debates about creation and evolution with my science teacher in year 7.
9. I used to be a dogmatic young earth creationist.
10. I doubt that I knew that is what I was.
11. I'm now a fairly indifferent theistic evolutionist, if I'm forced to label myself.
12. I'm passionate about science and religion because I am a Christian.
13. And I'm interested in science.
14. I still have the first copy of New Scientist that I ever read.
15. That was when I was in year 12, in 1998.
16. I was particularly fascinated by an article on quantum entanglement.
17. I wish I had studied quantum physics.
18. There are many things I wish I had done.
19. There are many things I wish I could do.
20. I wish I could read Latin.
21. And speak Russian.
22. And play bass guitar.
23. I think that my church does not have enough female guitarists.
24. My church has no female guitarists (that play at church regularly, anyway).
25. I play piano at my church during the evening service.
26. I have played the piano since I was in year 2 - 1988 - 7 years old.
27. I completed all the AMEB grades, but failed to pass the AMusA exam.
28. Twice.
29. I was pretty bitter for awhile after failing my AMusA a second time.
30. I hardly played the piano for ages.
31. I'm back to enjoying playing, when I get a chance.
32. I wish I had more time to play the piano.
33. I wish I had more energy to play the piano.
34. I wish I had practised scales more when I was a kid.
35. I love playing Mozart, because it's so light-hearted and fun.
36. I love playing Beethoven, because it's so emotional and I can bang out dramatic C minor chords.
37. I love Mendelssohn's Rondo Cappricioso, but I can't play the second part nearly fast enough.
38. Ditto for the Poulenc Toccata I played for my second AMusA exam.
39. My cousin Andrew plays the piano extremely well.
40. I enjoy playing piano with him.
41. And having my lovely sister-in-law Tegan sing.
42. And seeing my great-aunt Nina dance around the living room.
43. I love singing.
44. I can't sing.
45. I love dancing.
46. I'm not very good at dancing.
47. I have a DVD of all Kylie Minogue's music videos.
48. I'm not ashamed to admit that I have a DVD of all Kylie Minogue's music videos.
49. I like to dance to Kylie Minogue.
50. Particularly the dance routine she does in the music video for "I Wouldn't Change a Thing."
51. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I like to dance to Kylie Minogue.
52. At the moment I am procrastinating from writing a conference paper on the Boyle lectures.
53. This is a paper I will present at a Science and Religion conference at Lancaster in July.
54. At the end of June I will be heading over to the UK for 6 weeks.
55. I am very much looking forward to this.
56. I am in denial about how much I have to get done by then.
57. I would love to live in England for awhile one day.
58. I'm not sure if I could handle the winter.
59. This will be my third trip to the UK.
60. The other two trips (last year and the year before) were both in summer also.
61. This time I am looking forward to spending a week in each of London, Cambridge and Oxford.
62. I am particularly looking forward to visiting the Eagle and Child in Oxford and the Eagle in Cambridge again.
63. I am also looking forward to doing research among manuscripts in the British Library and other libraries.
64. I am hoping to look at Henry More's letters in the library of Christ's College, Cambridge.
65. I was so excited last year to visit the Royal Society of London and hold in my hands commonplace books written by Robert Boyle in the 17th century.
66. I was also excited to see the site where Boyle lived in Oxford and where he performed his famous air-pump experiments with Robert Hooke.
67. I am such a nerd.
68. While I am away, I will miss my family and friends.
69. I will also miss my lovely boyfriend, Matt.
70. My boyfriend is also a nerd.
71. But he's a different kind of nerd.
72. I met my boyfriend through my blog.
73. It still feels a little strange to say that I have a boyfriend.
74. But I am very happy.
75. Writing this list is helping me kill time before heading off to the gym.
76. I joined a Fernwood Women's Health Club just over a year ago.
77. I try to go about 5 times a week.
78. I have a personal trainer, Elizabeth, who is fantastic.
79. I like going to the gym.
80. I am very happy to be going to a female-only gym.
81. My favourite class is Body Pump.
82. There's something about lifting weights that is very empowering.
83. I plan to get back into Body Combat classes at some stage.
84. I try not to be too concerned about my physical appearance, but I still am.
85. I am looking forward to having a spiritual body!
86. I became a Christian when I was a little kid.
87. I asked Jesus to come into my heart.
88. I did this just after my bath, because I thought he would be able to get in more easily if I wasn't wearing any clothes.
89. My understanding of Christianity has progressed since then.
90. I can think of three significant times in my life where I have reaffirmed my faith.
91. The first was when I was about 12 - for perhaps the first time, the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection really hit me, I made a conscious decision to follow Jesus, and I was baptised.
92. The second time was in late high school - I felt that I'd been slipping a bit in my relationship with God, and I went down the front at an evangelistic service.
93. It was an incredibly emotional experience.
94. The third time was in my first year at uni - encountering strong intellectual opposition to my beliefs, I had to think through what I believed and why, and decide whether I could be rational and have faith in God.
95. I decided that I could.
96. Kirsten Birkett was an extremely important role model for me at this time.
97. My favourite book of the Bible is Romans.
98. My favourite chapter is Romans 8.
99. I know that this is rather unoriginal.
100. I don't mind!
101. I am not very good at quiet times and maintaining a personal prayer life.
102. I love reading the bible and praying with other people.
103. I am in a fantastic bible study group this year.
104. Fortunately the leader, Tim (also our associate pastor) managed to exorcise the spirit of Tuesday weakness from me via email, so I actually managed to get to bible study this week.
105. This wasn't as hard as I thought it might be.
106. I think that means I'm far too good at talking about myself.
107. And I can't count.
108. If you made it this far, thank you - I hope you didn't get too bored!