because quiz thingers are cool

---10 Firsts---
First Best Friend:: Larissa Friesen
First Screenname:: D4ATLC (no joke)
First Pet Name:: I forget. They were goldfish and I was very young. I know one of them was named after a young adult at my church.
First Piercing:: Nose
First Crush:: David Dammann (wouldn't it be funny if he googled this one day and found out!)
First CD:: do you mean tape? Clumsy by OLP.
First School:: River Elm Elementary School, Winnipeg
First House Location:: a few miles outside of Rosenort, MB
First Kiss:: Aaron
First Car:: Daisy! (2004 Mazda 6, silver)

---9 Lasts---
Last Time You Smoked:: 2004, to celebrate grad. and before that? Thanksgiving 1997 or something. And that's it. I guess I'm not much of a smoker.
Last Food You Ate:: dried figs
Last Car Ride:: home from a youth party at church
Last Movie You Watched:: School of Rock (at said youth party)
Last Phone Call:: something at work
Last CD You Listened To:: Weezer, the blue CD
Last Bubble Bath You Took:: probably when I was a kid. pre-1993, I think
Last Song You Listened To:: The Sweater Song (Weezer, remember?)
Last Words You Said:: something to Aaron about not reading over my shoulder

---8 Have-You-Evers---
Dated A Best Friend:: no, he became my best friend sometime after we started dating
Been Arrested:: no
Been On TV:: yes
Eaten Sushi:: yes!
Cheated On Your B/F:: no
Been On A Blind Date:: no
Been Out Of The Country:: does living in Germany for 4.5 years count? I mean yes.
Been In Love:: yes

---7 Things You Are Wearing---
1:: blue cords
2:: the famous "my bird is faster than your car" t-shirt
3:: purple zip-up hoodie
4:: polka-dot underoos
5:: boring socks
6:: bra
7:: umm...a hair elastic?

---6 Things You've Done Today---
1:: ate yogurt & granola for breakfast
2:: went to work
3:: drove in rush hour (I'll do penance later for my disgusting contribution to air pollution)
4:: went to church for youth group
5:: watched an episode of Lost
6:: wrote this thingy!

---5 Favorite Things (not in any order)---
1:: Aaron
2:: sunshine
3:: trees
4:: people (family, friends, hobos, etc)
5:: green

---4 People You Most Trust--- [not in any specific order!]
1:: God
2:: Aaron
3:: my parents
4:: lots of other people

---3 Things You Want To Do Before You Die---
1:: visit all the Canadian Territories, and Newfoundland and Labrador. (I've already visited all the other provinces)
2:: go back to Germany
3:: have a family

---2 Choices---
Vanilla or Chocolate:: Chocolate
Hugs or Kisses:: kisses!

---1 Person You Want To See Right Now---
1:: Karl or Tobin. Or Mom or Dad or Meghan. And lots of other people. I've been homesick these days.

flaming canine newfies on swings. trick-or-treat!

Monday morning I woke up early to the unpleasant aroma of burning plastic. After much sniffing and searching, it was determined that the source was my computer. So, it's now on the fritz. It's hard to tell exactly what's wrong with it, because all of it has worked at some point since the burning plastic incident, but never all at once (or at least not for very long). At this point we're thinking that it may or may not be the monitor, which doesn't really make much sense, but if it's not the monitor then we have no idea what the heck is wrong. Anyway, my lack of computer might affect my posting, and it might not. We'll see.

Here's some stuff I've seen/heard lately:

I saw a cop and her dog standing on the street and chatting to another cop who was sitting in his car with the passenger window all the way open. The dog was apparently happy and excited to see the cop in the car, so after turning a few circles, it jumped right through the window and into the passenger seat. Both cops laughed a lot.

I heard a killer Newfie accent. This person never, EVER pronounced the 'g' at the end of an '-ing' word, it was always '-in'. Actually, this was my first aid instructor from the weekend, so I had to listen to her talk a LOT. We did the unit on chokin, and then on severe bleedin, and don't forget the unit on bandagin and splintin.

On Monday, I had to do my time at one of the kids' programs from work. I got the easiest job ever! When we went to the playground, only two girls wanted to stay in the upper part and all the other kids wanted to go to the lower part. So, I got to stay with the two girls, who are some of the sweetest and best-behaved kids there are. Not only that, but they said I wasn't allowed to listen to their conversation, so I had to go over and swing on that swing by myself. So, I got to swing for about half an hour by myself with no kids bugging me at all! These two girls stayed within my line of sight the entire time, so I never had to get off the swing.

Those girls were funny, too! They were making incredibly detailed plans for Halloween (yes, 7 months early, and at age 8 that is not a short time). One was going to dress up as Pippi Longstocking, and the other was going to be Dead Pippi Longstocking. Hey, it's Halloween, so at least one of them had to be creepy in some way. They decided at whose house they were going to meet (after dressing up, but before putting on their makeup). They even spent about 10 minutes deciding precisely how they were going to say "trick-or-treat" and what face they were going to make and how Dead Pippi Longstocking was going to grab the candy in a ghoulish kind of way, and then they rehearsed the whole thing to make sure they had it down perfectly.

in need of peeps

Another level of spring has been reached. Many of the trees now match my cute pink umbrella! However, it rained all week long and was miserably cold. But today is finally sunny!

I have still been working like a maniac, but a blog is not the place to write long whiny paragraphs about that.

I spent this weekend taking a first aid course. It wasn't too bad, and I got to feel really smart because I knew a lot of the answers and I had a few really good questions. Plus, I made a friend named Izabella who was my practise buddy. We had lunch together today. She has a baby girl.

Now I am home again but with nobody to hang out with. I need peeps right now! Peeps, Where are you? It's the first sunny day in a long time and I want to go out and play with the peeps! But there aren't any. Oh well.

newsletter time

I'm writing a newsletter at work this week, and I'll be sending it to people who support me financially or who pray for me or encourage me or just plain want to know what I'm doing in my ministry at UrbanPromise.

If you want to receive this letter via snail mail, please leave me a comment or send me an e-mail, and include your current mailing address if you have reason to believe I might not have it. Thanks!

midnight epiphany

Okay, prepare yourselves, this is going to be a really random story.

Two years ago, I lived in Toronto for the 4 summer months, and I took bellydancing lessons. In my bellydancing class, there were two women, Angela and Maureen, who were identical twin sisters. The whole summer, it always felt like they reminded me of someone, or they were familiar to me in some way.

Fast forward a bit: I woke up around 5 last night and couldn't sleep. I spent the next hour or more in that really frustrating one-quarter-asleep and three-quarters-awake state where you're desperately trying to hold on to that sleep and not wake up all the way. Anyway, during this strange state of mind, it suddenly occurred to me who Angela and Maureen reminded me of: the twins Heather and Erica Farrell from Degrassi High (that blessed TV series that kept me entertained after school for so many years).

So, with that mystery solved, you'd think I could go back to sleep. But no, I had to think about it even further. Degrassi was filmed in Toronto. Many of the actors were just local kids who stayed in Toronto and led normal lives and never filmed anything again. Maybe Maureen and Angela didn't just remind me of the Degrassi twins, maybe they actually were the twins! They would be about the right age...

So this morning at work, I googled it all, and voila! They were in fact the very same actors! I TOOK BELLYDANCING LESSONS WITH THE DEGRASSI TWINS FOR 4 MONTHS AND NEVER REALIZED IT UNTIL TWO YEARS LATER. SO COOL!

can God sin?

Can God sin? I don't think so. Can God make mistakes? Maybe. I do think he can change his mind.

Whatever your take on those questions is, I certainly think this video is at least thought-provoking if nothing else. If you can't catch all the lyrics, there's a link to them on that page as well.

I'm not convinced that the title "Credo" fits the content very well, but maybe that's just me being picky about semantics.

new link

I've just put a new link in the sidebar to my friend Adam's journal of his time in Chile. You may remember my post about him building a microwave telescope in Port Coquitlam. Well, the telescope is now alive and well in Chile, and they're getting the whole thing set up. It should prove interesting.

even more oldtimers

Work this week has once again been somewhat overwhelming in terms of time and scheduling, which has made this blog suffer. To take revenge, I am writing this blog post while I'm at work. Thankfully, work has not actually been stressful or intimidating this week. I think it has something to do with me praying more/better/or soemthing. However that all works, I am grateful.

Two things about old people:

On Monday, there were two little old Chinese ladies and two little old Chinese men waiting at my bus stop. They were chattering and guesturing and joking and laughing like a gaggle of teenagers. It made me happy.

Today, I was once again reminded of the fact that I hate the sense of entitlement some old people have when it comes to getting on the bus. I am sick and tired of being elbowed out of the way as some little old lady or man decides to screw the whole bunch of people who are lined up and just get on the bus first no matter what the cost in manners or dignity.

Now a story about what I did yesterday:

I went to the NHL oldtimers game! This is where they put together a team of retired NHLers and pit them against a current community team. In this case, it was the Vancouver Police Department hockey team. Despite the fact that all of the NHLers were either entirely grey or even potbellied, they absolutely cleaned up. I think they scored 15 goals, and I think the VPD scored 5.

The thing that was so refreshing about this hockey game was how absolutely unpretentious it was! For you CMU-types, this game kind of resembled the Z-team game with its antics and tomfoolery. There was a clown referee, there was a trick puck that changed direction of its own volition in the middle of a penalty shot, at one point one of the players had "rocket skates" that had little spark-throwing fireworks attached, and the scorekeeper was constantly fudging the VPD score so it wasn't too embarrassing (I think the scoreboard read 15-13 at the end). The best part was when they opened up the zamboni gates and let in a herd of 5-year-old hockey players whose jerseys came down to their skates. So, they played 5 minutes of NHL vs. the Timbit team, which was ridiculously cute. It was a great night of down-to-earth, utterly foolish, and completely good-natured community fun.

untitled

Thousands of worm towers have appeared in the lawn, preparing to lay siege to us surface-dwellers.

Cherry trees are betraying distinct signs of pink.

I slept with my window open.

Spring?

another funny church lady

After church today an old Oma was holding little Caleb and telling everyone who came by, "He's my grandchild!" or, "I have a great-grandchild!" in her German accent. She was kidding, of course. None of her grandkids have children, although two of them are married. Funny how when a grandchild gets married, it's like the universal cue for the grandparents to expect a great-grandchild in a matter of months (nine, to be exact).

Anyway, it was hilarious to see her standing there with the baby and announcing "I have a grandchild!" to anyone who would listen. Robi and Aaron and I were watching her as her own husband came up. "He's my grandchild!" she told him. "Oh really? Whose is it?" I actually forget exactly how the conversation went from there, but I know that hilarity ensued, because my tummy hurt from laughing. I'm glad that old people can be just as silly and funny as young people.