Back.

We went on a holiday to Jasper/Edmonton for a week . We had a good time for the most part. Did some great hikes. Saw beautiful scenery, took some pictures. My favorite part was going up the tramway on Whistler's Mountain. I still have a few days off before I have to go back to work, and I feel way better than I did before my vacation began.

To update the oven situation, I tried changing the element and it did not work. But then I found out what was wrong. Joel had been messing with the knobs/dials trying to get the timer to work. While doing that, he inadvertently put the oven into automatic mode, causing the oven part not to work for some reason. I switched the dial back to manual mode, and we were back in baking business, baby.

That is all for now.

Can anyone interpret this?

It's 7:17 in the morning. I just woke up from a weird dream: I was trying to get somewhere on time. It was dark and I was riding my bike on 8th street near the Circle Drive over pass. Suddenly my bike stops and I drag it onto the boulevard in the middle to avoid getting hit by traffic whizzing past me. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with my bike and all of a sudden Phillip Yancey (a Christian author) is there. He shows me that my tire is busted. This perturbs me because I just got the bike. I look around to see if there is anywhere I can get my tire fixed, and I go to the nearby building. It's a convenience store/gas station that also happens to be a veterinarian's. I spend a long time waiting in line behind a guy who wants to pay for his gas and get his pitbull fixed at the same time, since he's here. It look just like a 7/11 inside except instead of the 7/11 logo it has a green outline of a yorkshire terrier. As I'm waiting in line all I can think about is how I'm going to get my bike warranty out when I get home and make someone pay for me getting my tire fixed... That's about all I can remember. It was probably just a junk dream, because I'm reading a book by Phillip Yancy right now, and I watched a documentary on dog gestation before I fell asleep. But the dream sure gave me an uneasy feeling.

I've eaten out a lot this week.

Not that I wanted to, but our oven just up and quit working a few days ago. I thought maybe the fuses had gone, but we went and got new ones and that didn't fix anything. So I now have to read up on the Internet on appliance repair, or get a new oven. We were going to get a new one at some point anyway, but it wasn't high on the priority list. Plus we wanted our next oven to have a flat top instead of a coil top, but I can't find any flat tops in the size we need. We need the apartment size which is 24" across, instead of the standard 30" size. If we got the 30" size, we would need to take our cupboards off the wall, insert a 6" spacer at the end and then put the cupboards back on so that oven would sit in the proper position under the new range hood. That would be lots of work which I didn't want to do right now, especially since my vacation starts in 2 days. The other thing that sucks about this is that if we get a new oven it won't match our fridge and dishwasher because they are almond colour, and they don't make almond appliances anymore. I dunno what I should do. I guess I'll try fixing it first.

What you bring to the text can change it's meaning.

In reference to Pastor Pepsi's post of today regarding what makes a book Christian. (http://pastorpepsi.blogspot.com/)

I commented along the lines that I feel the reader plays an important part in what makes any book Christian. I feel strongly about this, but I'm having a difficult time expressing exactly why. I guess basically, Christians have the Holy Spirit indwelling them, a constant companion who gives important perspective to inform our reading and protect our minds. The most beautiful thing about this is that we are able to give a Christian reading to any book, regardless of who wrote or published it. This is how we are able to engage the culture we live in without buying into it. Of course, there are some books perhaps should not be read, but I believe the Holy Spirit will guide each Christian on that point as well. One Christian might benefit from reading a certain book, which may cause another to stumble. And that applies to "secular" books, as well as books that would be sold in Parables. For example, there are "Christian Romance" novels that may inspire a single woman to look for godly values in a mate, but could cause a married woman to stumble if she begins to compare the hero in the novel to her own husband. That's just one example.

Well, I hope I've been able to be clear enough. Does anyone have anything else to add?

Snacks

Found two yummy and relatively healthy snacks today. One is for you cracker lovers out there. It's called Kashi TLC (tasty little crackers) in Honey Sesame flavour. They've got 7 whole grains and 0 trans fat. For those who prefer cookies, I found Simple Pleasures Baked Cookie Bars. The flavour I got is called California Crunch. They've got raisins, the odd cranberry, oats and sunflower seeds. Each has 4g of protein, 3g of fiber, 1.5 g of omega 6 and 0.4 g of omega 3 polyunsaturated fats. I found said snacks at Walmart. I always find more than I bargained for there.

I also bought a new pair of runners and a new outfit for my morning walks I'm planning on doing. I went this morning and my left heel now has a blister on it from the nasty runners I had. Know what's kind of funny? I took Joel's i-pod with me and I had unloaded Joel's songs and loaded it with just the right amount of my music for my walk. But I forgot to put Joel's music back onto it and he took it to work today. So instead of his brooding man-rock like Billy Talent or Incubus he'll be listening to some Sheryl Crow, Bif Naked, Hanson, and Gwen Steffani on his break. But I also put a couple Johnny Cash songs and 1 U2 song, so maybe he won't be too ticked.

Most Embarrassing Work Situation Ever.

The most embarrassing thing that has ever to me happened at work happened today. I was working on a trouble and had to give our customers a new modem. When I was setting up the wireless, I had to type "home" into the address bar to take me to the modem's internal control page. I must have miss-typed something because a page from the customer's Internet history came up instead. It was a porn site. The customer was standing right beside me, and he knew what had happened before I did, because he said "Oh no! That's so embarrassing!" before the page had even loaded fully and before I had even realized what I had done. He quickly typed in what I had meant to, and I finished and left within two minutes after that happened, trying to pretend nothing was weird. As I was driving home, felt like crying and laughing, but mostly crying. So I prayed for the man. I still feel kind of dirty for having seen that stuff, though.

Today is my first of 4 days off. I'm alone at home, watching a marathon of a certain reality show on tv ( I'm too embarrassed to admit which reality show it is!) Glad I'm not working today because about an hour ago it started snowing like crazy, and it's just so nice to sit here and watch it through my window rather than having to deal with it. I got my performance evaluation done at work this week, and it was really good. I really like to hear officially from my boss how I'm doing every so often because I tend to doubt myself even though I try my best 99% of the time. There were about 12 or 15 different areas my boss rated me in and in 3 areas I got "meets job requirements" and the rest were all "exceeds job requirements", so that felt really good. Still haven't heard whether my term will be extended or if they'll have to do layoffs for a while. My end date is Jan. 29. But I'm not too worried about it either way.

In other news, we'll be moving at the end of February, because we've purchased a little condo. Yes, we were finally approved for a mortgage. The place is not too far from where we live now, and it's a pretty typical 2 bedroom apartment style condo. Big enough for the two of us for now, and could also have room for a little one if that were to occur in a few years.

I think owning our place instead of renting is going to be a financial turing point for us, and I figured out that if we continue on with the same income, that we will be able to have our student loans and other debts (except mortgage) paid of just before I turn 30, which is just over 4 years from now. So I'm ready to focus on the task at hand for the next while, and try to ignore this crazy maternal instinct of mine until we're older and wiser and more financially secure. I'll probably still cry on mother's day though. But then , I'll probably cry on mother's day after I have kids too.

We had a great new year's eve. We hosted a small, impromptu gathering. We found out like 5 hours beforehand. One of our best friends, Mike, came over, as well as Matt and Melanie from Mike's small group. We had good food, played some guitar hero 2, rang in the new year while playing Settlers of Catan Cities and Knights. At midnight we had a crisis trying to open the sparkling apple juice on time for the toast. It seemed really funny at the time. It was a really enjoyable time. I love having people over, but I'm usually too shy to invite people.

That's all for now. Happy new year.