Introverts

I feel this is a good explanation of introverts :)

A week

Randomness.

This week, I found a different bike path home from work. It runs through forest, and so far I've seen a bunny rabbit, a woodpecker and a deer! I was tempted to stop and take a picture, but I'm betting they'd have been freaked by my ominous presence, and taken off.

I scored a goal in field lacrosse, and later also stuffed up a goal spectacularly, lol. I was closest to our goal at the start of play, and got the ball after a couple of short passes. So I booked it to the goal! And nobody could catch me! It must have been the negative thinking: "I'm totally going to miss this!" because I totally ran at the goal, threw the ball super fast towards the goal right in front of me.... and missed. ROFL! So I just kept running and laughing to go and pick up the ball, give it to the other team, and continue playing :)

I've attempted to start waking up earlier to read my bible before I go to work. I suck at this. I'm so anti-morning - I fully don't even get out of bed, just grab the book, blearily read a chapter whilst fighting to stay awake, then go back to sleep for 45 minutes till I have to get up for work. FAIL lol! But I've started writing out 1 Corinthians each day in the afternoon (and re-reading what I "read" in the morning), so I'll try and keep that going for the whole book.

And I've been reading "Helps to Holiness" by Samuel Logan Brengle. Apparently he's a famous Salvation Army holiness teacher. Here's a pic of the book cover... well the closest I could find online without taking a picture of my book. Just imagine the title reads "Helps to Holiness" instead:

And here's apparently a site where you can read his books:  http://www.raptureready.com/resource/brengle/brengle.html 

Ignore the rest of the site though, I don't know anything about it. I don't believe in the "rapture" where people mysteriously disappear. The bible says Jesus will return loudly, and like a lightning bolt across the sky - obvious to all. And at a time we don't expect.

Anyway, I have a cunning plan that involves doing what the book says and becoming holy. Could be fun!

Baking with Stephanie

There are three important things I learned making chocolate chip cookies today.

ONE:
If you're using hard old brown sugar that has basically solidified into little rocks, use an electric beater, or borrow one from a friend. Wooden spoons and whisks just don't cut it, and your fingers will thank you.

TWO:
If you "accidentally" make the cookies twice the size the recipe instructs you to, they're gonna take longer to bake than the recipe suggests (strangely enough).

THREE:
And MOST IMPORTANTLY, if you find you only have 1.5 cups of choc chips instead of 2 cups, DON'T use dark chocolate chips to make up the rest of the amount!!! I cannot stress this enough. Better to have slightly less chocolate content than to risk every other cookie bite being bitter dark chocolate death. Just one dark choc chip will spoil the whole cookie...

Extra credit:
.... but if you're desperate enough, you'll eat like, seven of them in quick succession anyway. Just make sure you've got enough milk to drink with them :)

Thursday field lacrosse

Three days posting in a row... or is it four? Gotta be some kind of record!

On Thursday nights I play field lacrosse with the Toronto Titans League. Field lacrosse is played on a soccer field outdoors, and there's usually seven players plus a goalie per side. There's like SO many rules, and it's pretty much no contact - you can basically tap the top of their stick if they have the ball, and that's it (but even then there's a million ways to get a penalty for it, so I just don't bother most of the time).

The only gear we wear is a mouthguard. Some people wear cleats, but I'm too cheap and lazy to buy them; and we play with lacrosse sticks that are more flat than the sticks we use in box lacrosse (what I play on Sundays).

Here is me after tonights game (which we won, yay!):

Note the sexy blue/black smile :) lol

Awesome highlight of the game (other than us winning): I totally scored a goal! Like, a goal I planned to score! I ran in towards the goal with my stick up high, and the girl behind the net tossed me the ball high-ish in the air. When it came down, I was literally right in front of the goal net, so I smacked the ball straight into the net. Goal!!! Yay for when plans work out :)

Garlic scapes

Today I picked up my Good Food Box. That's where you get a box of fruit and veges that's in season, and preferably organic or locally grown, and they buy it in bulk and portion it out to people so the cost stays low. We get it every 2 weeks.

It usually has some basics - lettuce, potatoes, onions and apples, and frequently something random like kale, mangoes or butternut pumpkin. Today's box had some random long curly green things that I initially thought were shallots... but then they were solid, like the stem of asparagus, only about as thick as a pencil, and they curled in a full loop and a half to the tip.

They also usually include a recipe if there's something random in the box, so I trusted that the mystery vege would be in this weeks recipe. Which it was :)

So here's my garlic scapes. They're basically the garlic flower stem that is cut off to encourage the plant to put more effort into growing the garlic bulb:

They have a very short season, because they apparently get hard and bitter after too long. The recipe just said to fry them in olive oil and add salt/pepper etc to season. So I chopped off the hard end bits, and cut them into about quarters so they'd fit in the pan. Here's my fried scapes, and just so you don't think I'm someone who takes pictures of every meal she eats, I've included the re-heated leftover hamburger from yesterday that I ate with them. Super gourmet!

SO GOOD! You know how you add garlic to things when you start to fry it to make the awesome garlic taste go through it? Well it's like I did that - but I didn't! The garlic taste in the scapes is much milder than the root, but fried and with salt is EPIC!

All that from garlic flower stems! Can you imagine a flower that smelled like garlic?? Mmmmmmmm yummmmmm.....

Canada Day 2014

Today I slept in, and then we played softball and had a BBQ at Riverdale Park.

We were just hitting the ball around, and just as we'd gotten together into 2 teams to have a proper game, another group of people came over to play against us! So we got to have a legit softball game, just with a couple of groups who happened to be at the park together on Canada Day.

Nice :)

Here's a shot I took while I was fielding.

In the background you can see the building where I used to live.

And here's some shots I took just for the fun of it :) The first one is a girl from our corps looking very Canadian, with Curly the dog. And the second one is some softball stuff.

Congress 2014

Wow.

So last weekend. Wow.

Last weekend was when we held The Salvation Army Canada and Bermuda Congress 2014. The THQ Youth Department (where I work) was responsible for coordinating all the children and youth events/childcare. So from Thursday June 19th to Monday June 23rd I ran around a lot, memorised a map of the city of Mississauga, cursed construction traffic and got very little sleep, lol.

I didn't actually get to see more than say, 10 minutes of any Congress meetings (total), but I'm pretty happy that I got to see the cool part. Which was when I saw some shiny brown boots start marching into the main hall, and heard them announcing the RCMP (Mounties) :) I ran to where I could see (down those stairs at the back), and there they were - wearing the full red outfit and carrying flags and everything. That was sweet :) But of course by then I had to race off and pick up the band for the Friday night concert. Which was the only event that I got to see most of, because I was running around for ALL other events. ALL.

Hah! Edit: You can totally see my jeans and sneakers on the stairs behind in this next shot!! From the knees down anyway :D Can you see? Just to the right of the exit sign! LOL!

(Edit: So then I had to see if I was in any more official pics, and I totally am! I'm the shadowy figure on the stairs behind the General in this next pic :) Right under the "sportzone" sign. Go me!)

Friday night concert - Tim Neufeld and the Glory Boys. Those guys are awesome. Oh, and they make pretty decent music too :) If they decide to do an Australian tour, you should go see them. Or get them to do a show somewhere local even.

That guys' double bass comes apart into two pieces for easy transportation. Cool!

Here's where they brought out their fake campfire, and led a singalong/prayer session in among the audience.

Here's where they were doing "Cornerstone"; you can listen at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBjPXBT8Is

Here is me watching them while watching my clock (phone) so I knew when to escort them backstage, and when to bring them back. All band photo credits go to Captain Terence Hale - the divisional youth guy for Ontario Great Lakes Division. I stole them off our youth Facebook page :)

Their songs are annoyingly catchy when you don't know the words - check out this one on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRYcoMyHPHE

Anyway, for the last week as I recuperated from Congress, I was basically sleeping every spare minute. I nearly fell asleep at the wheel taking the rental van back on Monday morning, then fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon. I napped Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday afternoon after work, took a lieu day Thursday and slept for most of that, and also slept for most of Saturday. I woke up at 2pm :) SO TIRED!!!!

Thank goodness they made this weekend a long weekend - I had SO much laundry to do! Tuesday (tomorrow) is Canada Day, and we would have had to work today (Monday) but they gave us the day off. I slept in, did laundry and cleaned stuff. Woot!