Hospitals of Hope, a Smith & Wesson, and a birthday

Busy day! I have a little break to take a quick shower and get ready for the last part of the day: Lindsay's birthday party! This morning I sorted medical instruments with Pathways people at Hospitals of Hope. HoH sends overflow of medical supplies overseas in huge crates. The instruments that we sorted (and sometimes wondered "why in the world would someone need this?") will be shipped out sometime next month. I saw my friend Leta, who is in charge of volunteer events if you ever want to go help out.

After the service project Lindsay, Rachel and I went out to shoot guns with Jeremy & Matt. The last time I shot a gun was probably six years ago, and I was a horrible shot. It's nice to know that I've improved without having to do anything. :) I'm pretty sure that my arms will be supremely sore tomorrow.

Time to go wash off the gunpowder smell and turn into a diva! :)

Scenes from a walk

Video Thursday

I wanted to share some videos that I've come across this week. I just discovered the Obsessives series on Chow.com.

Have you ever met someone so excited about pop?


"It's not a Hummer, you know, it's like a Ferrari." This video is really interesting, but I held my breath in the first 4 minutes as his face is 8 inches away from a grinder and a piece of sharp steel. And then there's the moment when he tells the camera man "That's gonna come right at you."


And here's one for when you're needing to open a bottle of wine and you don't have a corkscrew. Physics class paid off for this guy. :)


Ok, one more Obsessives. Urban farming!

Chicken Parmesan: FAIL

I had good intentions of making chicken parmesan for dinner tonight. I got everything out and put my chicken patties in the oven. Yes, I was making chicken parmesan the lazy way. I smelled something burning 6 minutes later and I had to take the chicken patties out early. I'm not sure what was burning, but I think my oven is telling me that it needs a good cleaning.

So since I'm afraid to bake anything else until I clean my oven, I went for the trusty always-a-reliable-backup-for-a-failed-meal Mac & Cheese. I got the noodles cooked and set aside, and had put the chicken patties in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Then I blew the breaker. This microwave is more powerful than my old one, which only blew the breaker when I used the toaster at the same time. It was probably a mistake to have both lights on in the living room, and the light and lamp in the kitchen, and the microwave going, all at the same time. This is the second time in a month that I've blown the breaker. Not annoying at all! I'm really looking forward to when this happens and it's 30 degrees and dark outside.

I set aside the noodles, got my shoes on and declared "I am woman, hear me roar" and headed down to the basement. I flipped the breaker and was glad to see the lights back on. I still needed my chicken cooked though, so this time I turned off all the lights that I didn't need and used the microwave. I strained the noodles while I was waiting. Straining noodles in the almost-dark is sort of an adventure.

So now everything is ready but the buns which had been in the freezer. I used the defrost setting on my toaster (which is actually a bagel toaster so it has more settings than a regular toaster) but I didn't really watch the buns and they ended up coming out more burned than toasted.

It's a good thing that I'm an even-tempered person. I am pretty sure that if I had anger management issues, I would have thrown a few plates against the wall by now or curled in a ball of depression. It could have been worse. I'm really thankful that a fire didn't start in my oven or toaster, and that I'm capable of flipping a breaker. This reminds me that I should probably put a fire extinguisher on my Christmas list. Just in case.

The Daily DeMo :: A million miles in a thousand years

Oh, hello. Four days into November and I am doing well at posting every day, but I've been really bad at posting the latest Daily DeMo... times 4. We have some catching up to do! And because some of my learning is based on current events, you can probably figure out when the DD was supposed to be posted.

The Daily DeMo : Edition 25

DD191 :: Saturday - I went to my first ever book tour, for Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He told the process of a story, about how it's not a great story if the character just sits around doing nothing. The narrator has to make something happen. This in turn related to our own life stories, and how we are in control of the characters in our life and how they interact.

DD192 :: Sunday - At Tim & Steph's wedding shower I learned that you can retire from the Air Force after 20 years, Phil from my Tuesday night Bible study is engaged and his fiance is living in Europe and they're trying to plan a wedding and decide where they'll live since they're both in the Air Force. Also, after a conversation with Angela, I learned that a hog farmer in Elizabethton, NC makes $33k.

DD192.1 - I should know how to do this, but sometimes it's nice to have another lesson about paths in Illustrator.

DD193 :: Monday - To be seen from 750 feet away, a sign's letters need to be at least 33 inches tall.

DD194 :: Tuesday - Are you missing the underscore key on your Motorola Q? It's not really missing, you just have to push the "alt" key, then the "cap" key, and then choose the underscore from the symbol menu. Here's how I found out.

DD195 :: Wednesday - I was going to mention that my friend Allen has inflatable packaging for about 5 pounds of ground beef that he leaves sitting on a shelf in his living room. It really messes with your mind, especially if you know that meat should be refrigerated and not sitting on an antique bookshelf. But I'm not going to mention that, because I wanted to find a picture to go with it, but once I started looking through Google's pictures of ground beef, I suddenly lost my appetite for any bovine-related meal. I stumbled across such beauties as this one.

But I will tell you that I didn't know about the Indian on the Tootsie Roll Pop wrapper. There's a rumor that if you find the Indian on the wrapper and send it in to the TRP people they'll send you a free TRP. I found this website, which led me to this website that talks about urban legends of candy. (btw, the free TRP thing isn't totally true) I learned all sorts of fun candy facts that could make the Daily DeMo list for a week, but I'll let you read through them all.

DD195 :: Thursday - lots of computer stuff. transfering files and other junk. {post note: This is all that I have written. I think this was the day that we switched servers at work, and I was busy helping people get set up and find all their junk and was too exhausted and tired of computers to write more. I learned a lot of technical computery stuff that day. One thing I do remember is that if you're wanting to copy a file, you can right-click the file icon and drag it to the destination, and when you let go of the mouse button it will give you an option to Copy, Move, or Create Shortcuts.}

DD195.1 - We're bombing the moon. Crazy.

DD196 :: Friday - To change the default location to save files in Word 2007, go to Word Options > Save > Default file location.

Banditos and Dog, and a Cat! Oh My!

This is just a sampling of the costumes at Fred & Wilma's Rob & Heather's party on Saturday night. I won prettiest costume, and then sort of a people's choice that everyone cast votes. Too cool! I wasn't expecting to win anything at all, so right now I think my friends are just the sweetest people ever. And I already have a costume idea for next year and can recycle some props (thanks, Cari!).

I traded my two Starbucks instant coffee gifts for Jimmy's Chipotle gift card. It was a fair trade since Jimmy loves coffee, and I love Chipotle!


This is Jimmy as Aladdin-turned-Pope, and Jennifer as a woman from Kazakhstan, or Kyrgyzstan. I'm not really sure from where, but I know that her costume is authentic. :) Jimmy wanted a picture with me (do you blame him? haha!) but I'm not sure when I'll get it since it's on his camera.

I'll post more pics tomorrow! In the meantime, you can find me listening to the Wicked soundtrack (with Defying Gravity on repeat).