I am a Christian, FYI

For anyone who didn't know, I'm a Christian.

For me, that means that God is on my mind (frequently) every day. Today I was thinking of random encounters I've had with God as I walked from the gym club I coach to the bus stop to catch the bus home. All the plants have been super green and lush lately, due to it being Spring and having rained. There are some gorgeous flowers around at the moment, many apple and cherry blossoms, and I think lilac. Whatever it is, it is light purple and smells nice. Also, lots of snails came out after the rain.

Lilacs (purple) and apple trees (pink)

At the bus stop recently I've seen a raccoon, a chipmunk, a rabbit, a cardinal, a squirrel and some turkey vultures (I think). No deer or foxes yet, but we'll see. All these things are gorgeous, and they make me think of God & the cool stuff he does. I frequently think like that when I'm around nature. It's pretty awe inspiring/attention-getting/interesting to me.

Another encounter I thought of was a historical one. One week I went to church at the North Brisbane Salvation Army, and before it started I was minding my own business as usual. As the meeting started, I had a random thought in my head - like I'd overheard someone else's thought. And the thought was a basic expectation of push-ups tonight. Then I was curious - how on earth were there going to be push-ups during a church meeting??? It got my attention, and it sort of "sounded" like God, so I waited to see what would happen.

And for some random reason, during the service that night, someone on stage was asked to do ten push-ups. I've never seen push-ups at church before or since, but the one time there was - I got advance notice. That was pretty cool :)

Long weekend

Well, the May long weekend is over, and I need a holiday from my holiday.

I went on a retreat to a farm, and wandered around getting super sore feet and avoiding sunburn. Took about 2.5-3 hours to drive there on Saturday morning. I saw a garter snake, and a scarlet tanager, and some other random birds. Here is a pictorial telling of my weekend:

Trillium is the provincial flower of Ontario. It's protected, so you're not allowed to pick it, and apparently is tricky to grow. It was everywhere on the farm.

Here's where I climbed a tree. Not very high though, I was kinda lazy.

After I climbed the tree, I walked around a ploughed field, then along the fence line overlooking dandelion-land.

Then I went to the barn. First I walked in where the sheep were, and they all "baa-aaed" and raced at me, assuming I brought them food. I didn't, so I left, and went around to the side :)

There were blue eggshells at various random locations around the farm:

I climbed up on the hay bales, because of course - hay bales!

Then on my way back I took the scenic route, walked over a couple of hills and ran into this. It's a lot higher up than it looks.

After various exclamations of disbelief, I had a conversation with myself with part of me asking the rest if I was going to climb up there. As my feet automatically took me there, I said "what kind of a stupid question is that??" and also "why was this not on the brochure??? No secret tree houses allowed!!"Again, much higher than it looks in this picture. It was maybe the equivalent of the third storey of a building?

And so here's the view from inside the treehouse. The ladders were a bit sketchy, and it was weird because the house was all enclosed (windows and all). But hey - tree house!

We had lots of bonfires, and I chopped lots of wood, found and carried lots of wood, and got annoyed at least once because a guy was surprised that a girl could use an axe (cranky face).

Here is some more trillium. This one is a light purple.

Here is a bouquet of dandelions. Because we weren't allowed to pick the wildflowers, but nobody cares about dandelions. And there were SO MANY!!!!!

After the dandelion picking, we arrived at the farm house, and picked some rhubarb. Then we washed it and I cut it, and other people made pies out of it. We had them for dessert that night & they were pretty good :)

Here is a random wildflower called Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

Here is another random wildflower called Bloodroot. When you pick it at the base, you break off part of the root, and the sap that comes out is bright red, and you need soap to wash it off.

Here is bloodroot sap on my hand.

And here are some more trilliums - this time a "red" one and a white one. Not really red - looks more purple...

And a wild leek.

And here is the tiny little frog I caught. It would have fit on a 10c coin. Maybe even a 5c. It could jump far and fast :) I rinsed it with water and then released it so hopefully my sweaty hands didn't hurt it...

And then we drove home Monday afternoon. Just in time too - I had SO much laundry...

Junk food vs baking supplies

Strange how my mind works.

A bar of chocolate is clearly junk food, and thus unhealthy and I shouldn't be eating so much of it.

A bag of choc chips however is obviously baking supplies. Baked goods are healthy, therefore choc chips are totally acceptable.

Pictured above: NOT junk food...

Pet peeve..

So I love Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org). It has some super funny Crash Course in World History videos, and helps me keep my maths skills current with fun incentives like visual progress charting, points and badge earning :)

But my pet peeve is this...

See that little grey square in the middle of an otherwise perfect field of navy blue? Each square displays your mastery of a particular math skill, and I've covered early math, worked my way through grades 1-7, and now am well on my way through more advanced levels. The squares start out as grey (unpractised skills) and there are four different shades of blue to show your level of mastery. Navy blue means "mastered".

So why is there a grey square ruining my progress? The jerks keep adding more skills :( Sure it's simple enough to practise the skill - but then you have to wait 16 hours between each Mastery challenge (they allow you to proceed to darker shades of blue). My personal favourite was waiting for the mastery challenges on basic counting, or multiples of ten. SO ANNOYING!!!!! I KNOW ALL THIS STUFF AND REHASHING IT IS TORTURE!!!

Now it's back to the drawing board as I go and learn how to... (checks annoying grey square) *ahem* Represent Ratios. Yippee.

(cranky face, lol)