This past week was the week of Mardi Gras or "Fat Tuesday." It was followed by Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the catholic season of lent. My church hosted a pancake supper to symbolize the big feast before a long period of fasting. The youth group was put in charge of taking orders and actually cooking. There was about five to seven of us flipping flapjacks, serving guests and we even had a person calling out BINGO. At the beginning, there were a few minor problems like having the two skillets short-circut the power outlet so we had to move them to a different area. After a hectic twenty minutes, we finally got the hang of things. Plus, a couple more kids showed up to help out. One of them was my friend, Molly (feel free to check her blog out). Although the turnout of people wasn't quite as good as last year, but it was still fun.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Friday, February 28, 2014
A Silver in St. George / "Dam" Las Vegas
Well, I haven’t posted about soccer in a while, but the only thing I’ve been doing for the past months is practice, which isn’t the most enthralling thing. So instead of talking about my soccer, I will recall on this post my brother’s soccer tournament in St. George. We left on Friday, drove for a good few hours, and arrived in the sunny, red rock environment of St. George.
As a result of not doing so well during their fall soccer season, my brother’s team was looking for a confidence booster in winning the tournament. The first game, they won 3-2. The second game, they won 1-0. The third game, they won 5-2. Now, I don’t what it looks like to you reading it, but those wins felt A LOT better than the multiple season losses, even from a spectators point of view. After winning all three games they moved on to semi-finals, which was a success too. The finals was pretty intense; going into overtime and penalty kicks. Unfortunately, they lost during the penalty kicks. Sound familiar? Yep, this situation took place before in the girl’s high school state semi-finals soccer game.
As a result of not doing so well during their fall soccer season, my brother’s team was looking for a confidence booster in winning the tournament. The first game, they won 3-2. The second game, they won 1-0. The third game, they won 5-2. Now, I don’t what it looks like to you reading it, but those wins felt A LOT better than the multiple season losses, even from a spectators point of view. After winning all three games they moved on to semi-finals, which was a success too. The finals was pretty intense; going into overtime and penalty kicks. Unfortunately, they lost during the penalty kicks. Sound familiar? Yep, this situation took place before in the girl’s high school state semi-finals soccer game.
 |
| Whoo, yeah! Second place! |
Friday, February 14, 2014
Science Fair Surprise
So I started thinking and researching stuff that pertained to my interests. Finally, I found a site that talked about food and reaction times which reminded me of gum. I did some research about gum and learned scientists had already proven that gum improves your reaction time, so that experiment was out of the question. I didn't want to totally throw out the idea, so I thought about adjusting it. Then...light bulb! I would do an experiment to see if gum improves reaction times more in children or adults. Yeah! I did more research, this time on brain plasticity in kids. And I was off!
I created a question and a hypothesis. I found a website that tested reaction times and made little sheets of paper for volunteers to write their results on. The hardest part was finding forty volunteers to do my experiment. However, even that got done eventually. I wrote my research paper and finished my display board. I was ready for the science fair.
And, of course, after being perfectly healthy for months, I get sick the day of the fair. Of all the times. The good thing was I was still able to go to school and participate, but it was very uncomfortable because I had a sore throat and a mild, but painful cough. When the judges came around to my display, I temporarily quelled my cough, but I had a terrible performance! I rushed through everything, forgetting to say key things like my hypothesis and half my procedure. It was very embarrassing. However, I figured they were only judges and my goal was to get a good grade from my teacher. Luckily, my presentation to my teacher went a lot better, and I got the feeling she liked my project. Overall, it was an okay afternoon.
Two days later, on Friday (the day this was posted) the twenty finalists moving on and the twenty honorable mentions were announced during second period. My second period class is relatively loud, so I missed the first half. The second half revealed some names that belonged to kids in my class and I congratulated them. The big surprise came at lunch when my friends told me they had heard my name on the announcements! At first I didn't believe them, but sure enough, a special certificate with my name on it was waiting for me in the office. What, I made it?! Despite my awful presentation? Apparently it wasn't as bad as I thought. :) So I guess I'm going to the district science fair. -_- At least it will look good on a college application.
Here are a couple cat memes that have to do with science.
 |
| Image courtesy of Le Café Witteveen |
 |
| Image courtesy of Beam Me Up |
Friday, February 7, 2014
A Park of Dragons
Enter DragonVale.
It's a digital game for touch screens and smart phones where the player builds a park with various kinds of dragons. In my opinion, it's pretty awesome. Although, I did stop playing it for about a year because my iPad experienced some technical difficulties and I didn't get back into DragonVale for a long time even after the iPad was fixed.
It all starts with a floating island in the middle of the sky. On it, a bunch of rocks and trees that need to be cleared along with one portal. Through this portal comes tiny wizards that walk through your park, earning the player money. The more wizards in one's park, the better one is doing. Of course, one isn't going to get far without dragons. The most basic dragons (the starter ones) are the plant dragon, the fire dragon, and the earth dragon.
To move further along in the game, one must breed dragons, collect coins, and grow treats. My favorite and least favorite part is breeding dragons, hoping to end up with a rare kind. I love seeing the cool egg designs and new dragons created, however, it can be immensely frustrating. Getting rare dragons is, well, a rare event. There is no guarantee one will get the dragon one wants, no matter how many times one breeds the same pair of dragons.
Click here to visit the DragonVale Wiki. It has a ton of info such as all the kinds of dragons, breeding hints, and the latest news.
It's a digital game for touch screens and smart phones where the player builds a park with various kinds of dragons. In my opinion, it's pretty awesome. Although, I did stop playing it for about a year because my iPad experienced some technical difficulties and I didn't get back into DragonVale for a long time even after the iPad was fixed.
It all starts with a floating island in the middle of the sky. On it, a bunch of rocks and trees that need to be cleared along with one portal. Through this portal comes tiny wizards that walk through your park, earning the player money. The more wizards in one's park, the better one is doing. Of course, one isn't going to get far without dragons. The most basic dragons (the starter ones) are the plant dragon, the fire dragon, and the earth dragon.
To move further along in the game, one must breed dragons, collect coins, and grow treats. My favorite and least favorite part is breeding dragons, hoping to end up with a rare kind. I love seeing the cool egg designs and new dragons created, however, it can be immensely frustrating. Getting rare dragons is, well, a rare event. There is no guarantee one will get the dragon one wants, no matter how many times one breeds the same pair of dragons.
 |
| Above is one of the floating islands of my DragonVale park, just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Sorry about the poor resolution; you might want to click on the picture to enlarge it. |
Click here to visit the DragonVale Wiki. It has a ton of info such as all the kinds of dragons, breeding hints, and the latest news.
Friday, January 31, 2014
A |ˈbākən| Mishap
bacon |ˈbākən|nouncured meat from the back or sides of a pig.
I considered myself to be a decent cook.
I can make a multitude of things ranging from a simple slice of buttered toast to a Thanksgiving dinner (minus the turkey). Of course, I've made a numerous mistakes along the way. There was the time I forgot to put baking soda in chocolate cupcakes (they turned out very dense and compact). I once added baking soda to a pretzel dough when the directions said to let the baking soda dissolve in water (where one dips an unbaked pretzel before placing it in the oven). Turns out, baking soda in a pretzel tastes HORRENDOUS. Like EXTREMELY salty guck. That same night, I accidentally used half of my dad's calzone dough in making the pretzels before realizing I had mixed up the two bowls of dough. (That was not my night.) On other accounts, I have melted butter to the point where the cookies don't turn out flat, boiled pasta until it almost turned into complete mush, and burned white chocolate in the microwave when I was just trying to melt it.
Other than that, I've been pretty successful in my food expeditions.
However, this past weekend, I recently experienced one of, if not the worst cooking accident in the history of me. In fact, I very nearly burnt down my house. No joke.
And I blame the bacon.
It was a nice, fifty degree afternoon with the sun shining and the snow glistening on the ground. I had just come home from soccer practice and was going to make lunch for the family while they were out on a walk around the neighborhood. I decided to make sunrise sandwiches (so it was going to be more like an afternoon breakfast than a lunch). I was trying out a recipe for this meal which involved canadian bacon as the meat for the sandwich. There happened to be no canadian bacon lying around, so I came to the natural conclusion to use regular bacon instead. The recipe called for warming the pre-cooked bacon in a pan, but I was already using the pam dusted pan to fry/grill five or so 1/4 inch tomato slices (about 2-3 minutes if you were wondering). I wanted things to be ready when my family got home, so I set about multitasking. I mixed up some eggs and put them in a second, larger pan on the stove and they began to cook. While the tomatoes were also on the stove, I placed four strips of bacon on a toaster oven pan (eight inches wide, five inches long) wrapped with aluminum foil.
Now, you must understand that "toasting" bacon has been done quite often in my household. We put the bacon in the toaster oven, set it to a "toast" setting and keep an eye on it until the bacon grease is foaming up. Then the bacon is removed and set on a hot plate and patted with a paper towel to absorb the excess grease. IT TURNS OUT JUST FINE. The worst that has ever happened is the bacon was in the toaster oven too long and ended up drily burnt.
I took it to a whole new level.
My family arrived home while the bacon, eggs, and multiple rounds of tomatoes were cooking. My dad decided to help by preparing English muffins topped with a sprinkle of cheese. I started putting the cooked tomatoes on a plate and the scrambled eggs in a serving bowl. Both of our backs were facing away from the toaster oven and stove when my mom asked "Is something burning?" I guess my dad and I were so focused on our jobs we didn't notice the smell (even though we were three feet away and my mom was in another room). It was mostly my fault though for not watching cooking appliances that were on (something I need to improve on).
Anyway, we both turned around to see the bacon in the toaster oven COMPLETELY ENGULFED IN ONE. BIG. FLAME. HOLY CRAP! My dad opened the toaster oven at which point the flame split into flames and expanded out of the toaster oven and licked top of it along with the underside of the wooden cabinet that was on the wall above the toaster oven. He immediately and started blowing on the fiery bacon as hard as he could while I kinda just stood there (I know, I'm real professional in these disaster situations). For those of you who are confused at this point, my dad was trying to blow out six to eight inch flames because it was a grease fire and you never put water on a grease fire for it will EXPLODE. One way to put out grease fires is eliminating the fire's air supply aka smothering it (for other methods, click here). My dad was trying to accomplish this; there was no time to do anything else. Luckily after a few hard exhales, the fire went out, but then a massive amount of smoke filled the house, turning the air into an ugly haze. Plus, it smelled bad. Fans were switched on and windows were opened to force the smoke out. Oven mitts were used to carry the scalding toaster oven pan out onto the deck to cool atop a hot plate. After things calmed down, there was still two problems. The bacon was ruined and no way were we going to miss out on a bacon, egg, cheese, tomato and avocado (spontaneously added) sandwich.
I checked the bacon bag and there were four pieces remaining. Only four. This time I put them carefully in a pan on the stove. I watched those precious pieces like a hawk, well maybe not to that extent. The bacon cooked nicely, was added to the sunrise sandwiches and we finally sat down to eat. It was delicious and all was well.
Except for one thing.
I haven't yet told you what the bacon looked like after lighting on fire.
It was not the burnt, crispy charcoal that one might expect.
No.
That bacon was melted, MELTED I SAY, so it looked like strips of TAR. Yes, that's right, somehow I FREAKING MELTED BACON...INTO TAR! How is that even possible?
And now *snivel, snivel* I have lost my faith in bacon. How epically tragic.
For your convenience I present you all with a visual aid consisting of what I call "tar bacon."
Oh, by the way, this NFL Super Bowl XLVIII weekend, my family is having a bunch of friends over to watch the game. AND GUESS WHAT? I'M MAKIN' APPETIZERS AND DESSERTS! OH YEAH! Don't worry, nobody will be harmed in the making of these foods...And the house won't burn down...
hopefully.
I considered myself to be a decent cook.
I can make a multitude of things ranging from a simple slice of buttered toast to a Thanksgiving dinner (minus the turkey). Of course, I've made a numerous mistakes along the way. There was the time I forgot to put baking soda in chocolate cupcakes (they turned out very dense and compact). I once added baking soda to a pretzel dough when the directions said to let the baking soda dissolve in water (where one dips an unbaked pretzel before placing it in the oven). Turns out, baking soda in a pretzel tastes HORRENDOUS. Like EXTREMELY salty guck. That same night, I accidentally used half of my dad's calzone dough in making the pretzels before realizing I had mixed up the two bowls of dough. (That was not my night.) On other accounts, I have melted butter to the point where the cookies don't turn out flat, boiled pasta until it almost turned into complete mush, and burned white chocolate in the microwave when I was just trying to melt it.
Other than that, I've been pretty successful in my food expeditions.
However, this past weekend, I recently experienced one of, if not the worst cooking accident in the history of me. In fact, I very nearly burnt down my house. No joke.
And I blame the bacon.
It was a nice, fifty degree afternoon with the sun shining and the snow glistening on the ground. I had just come home from soccer practice and was going to make lunch for the family while they were out on a walk around the neighborhood. I decided to make sunrise sandwiches (so it was going to be more like an afternoon breakfast than a lunch). I was trying out a recipe for this meal which involved canadian bacon as the meat for the sandwich. There happened to be no canadian bacon lying around, so I came to the natural conclusion to use regular bacon instead. The recipe called for warming the pre-cooked bacon in a pan, but I was already using the pam dusted pan to fry/grill five or so 1/4 inch tomato slices (about 2-3 minutes if you were wondering). I wanted things to be ready when my family got home, so I set about multitasking. I mixed up some eggs and put them in a second, larger pan on the stove and they began to cook. While the tomatoes were also on the stove, I placed four strips of bacon on a toaster oven pan (eight inches wide, five inches long) wrapped with aluminum foil.
Now, you must understand that "toasting" bacon has been done quite often in my household. We put the bacon in the toaster oven, set it to a "toast" setting and keep an eye on it until the bacon grease is foaming up. Then the bacon is removed and set on a hot plate and patted with a paper towel to absorb the excess grease. IT TURNS OUT JUST FINE. The worst that has ever happened is the bacon was in the toaster oven too long and ended up drily burnt.
I took it to a whole new level.
My family arrived home while the bacon, eggs, and multiple rounds of tomatoes were cooking. My dad decided to help by preparing English muffins topped with a sprinkle of cheese. I started putting the cooked tomatoes on a plate and the scrambled eggs in a serving bowl. Both of our backs were facing away from the toaster oven and stove when my mom asked "Is something burning?" I guess my dad and I were so focused on our jobs we didn't notice the smell (even though we were three feet away and my mom was in another room). It was mostly my fault though for not watching cooking appliances that were on (something I need to improve on).
Anyway, we both turned around to see the bacon in the toaster oven COMPLETELY ENGULFED IN ONE. BIG. FLAME. HOLY CRAP! My dad opened the toaster oven at which point the flame split into flames and expanded out of the toaster oven and licked top of it along with the underside of the wooden cabinet that was on the wall above the toaster oven. He immediately and started blowing on the fiery bacon as hard as he could while I kinda just stood there (I know, I'm real professional in these disaster situations). For those of you who are confused at this point, my dad was trying to blow out six to eight inch flames because it was a grease fire and you never put water on a grease fire for it will EXPLODE. One way to put out grease fires is eliminating the fire's air supply aka smothering it (for other methods, click here). My dad was trying to accomplish this; there was no time to do anything else. Luckily after a few hard exhales, the fire went out, but then a massive amount of smoke filled the house, turning the air into an ugly haze. Plus, it smelled bad. Fans were switched on and windows were opened to force the smoke out. Oven mitts were used to carry the scalding toaster oven pan out onto the deck to cool atop a hot plate. After things calmed down, there was still two problems. The bacon was ruined and no way were we going to miss out on a bacon, egg, cheese, tomato and avocado (spontaneously added) sandwich.
I checked the bacon bag and there were four pieces remaining. Only four. This time I put them carefully in a pan on the stove. I watched those precious pieces like a hawk, well maybe not to that extent. The bacon cooked nicely, was added to the sunrise sandwiches and we finally sat down to eat. It was delicious and all was well.
Except for one thing.
I haven't yet told you what the bacon looked like after lighting on fire.
It was not the burnt, crispy charcoal that one might expect.
No.
That bacon was melted, MELTED I SAY, so it looked like strips of TAR. Yes, that's right, somehow I FREAKING MELTED BACON...INTO TAR! How is that even possible?
And now *snivel, snivel* I have lost my faith in bacon. How epically tragic.
For your convenience I present you all with a visual aid consisting of what I call "tar bacon."
 |
| Yeah, this is what it looked like. Image courtesy of my brother. |
hopefully.
Friday, January 24, 2014
A Little Deodorant Should Do the Trick
As previously mentioned in my JV Annihilation post, (I know, that was a few months ago) my soccer team experienced some pretty interesting matches during the season. One particular away game was against Union. The field was out in the middle of nowhere, but still located near the mountains. It was sunny, but not too hot, although it was a long bus ride. JV was unloading and Varsity was warming up, when I heard the first cries of “Ok, guys, don’t sit on the ground; some bugs just bit me!” and “Ah, I think I just got bit by a mosquito!” Soon, we were all being “attacked” by pesky blood suckers. I, for one, do NOT like mosquitos; the bites can swell up to the size of a golf ball on me.
No one was expecting this; the only time I remember Utah being buggy was when I went camping in the summer. Of course, no one had any bug spray, but we had to do something. Then one girl recommended using deodorant (yep, that’s right, the stuff you apply to your armpits). Apparently, if applied on a mosquito bite, it would suspend the itching sensation for a little while. Uh, come again? At first I was skeptical, but hey, it’s not like I had another idea. I tried it out, rubbing it on a growing bump on my left hand. It didn’t completely work for me (wearing off after around ten minutes), though it was better than nothing. So all through both games I was trying to resist the itch on my left elbow or my right knee. Not too fun while one is trying to do homework. However, my other teammates were happy with the results, so I guess it was just me.
Thankfully, Varsity won their game and JV was up 8-0 at half time. According to the Mercy Rule, if a team is winning by eight goals ten minutes into the second half, the game will end early. Ten minutes into the second half, we were up 9-0 so the referee blew the final whistle.
We packed up, loaded the bus, ate some pizza (delivered during our game) and settled in for a two hour ride. Of course, most of the time, my numerous bug bites were not very pleasant. When I got home I put some anti-itch gel on, much to my relief. Much to my dismay, those darn mosquito bites lasted for a week. Not cool.
Well, here is just a comical soccer meme. It's not really related to the post, but I thought you might like it. :)
No one was expecting this; the only time I remember Utah being buggy was when I went camping in the summer. Of course, no one had any bug spray, but we had to do something. Then one girl recommended using deodorant (yep, that’s right, the stuff you apply to your armpits). Apparently, if applied on a mosquito bite, it would suspend the itching sensation for a little while. Uh, come again? At first I was skeptical, but hey, it’s not like I had another idea. I tried it out, rubbing it on a growing bump on my left hand. It didn’t completely work for me (wearing off after around ten minutes), though it was better than nothing. So all through both games I was trying to resist the itch on my left elbow or my right knee. Not too fun while one is trying to do homework. However, my other teammates were happy with the results, so I guess it was just me.
Thankfully, Varsity won their game and JV was up 8-0 at half time. According to the Mercy Rule, if a team is winning by eight goals ten minutes into the second half, the game will end early. Ten minutes into the second half, we were up 9-0 so the referee blew the final whistle.
We packed up, loaded the bus, ate some pizza (delivered during our game) and settled in for a two hour ride. Of course, most of the time, my numerous bug bites were not very pleasant. When I got home I put some anti-itch gel on, much to my relief. Much to my dismay, those darn mosquito bites lasted for a week. Not cool.
Well, here is just a comical soccer meme. It's not really related to the post, but I thought you might like it. :)
 |
| Image courtesy of Meme Center |
Friday, January 10, 2014
How did I spend New Year's Eve? Reading, of course.
I didn't light fireworks.
I wasn't celebrating with friends.
I even missed the ball dropping in Times Square.
Instead my New Year's Eve consisted of a movie and three hours of reading. Not that I'm complaining.
 |
| Image courtesy of Wikipedia |
It began (around 7:30) with Tom Hanks starring as Forrest Gump in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump (didn't see that one comin', did ya☺). I, for one, was really impressed. I had no idea what the movie was going to be about, and when I asked my parents, they gave me nothing. So I came in with low expectations and I was pretty happy with it. Although it wasn't the action-packed, special effects filled film that peaks my interest the most, but it definitely had a lot of emotion along with a very good plot line. Forrest Gump is just the kind of character that amazes you with how he takes everything, good and bad. I also liked how it had a happy and complete ending. For those of you who haven't seen it, I highly recommend that you pick up a copy and watch it.
We finished the movie just after 10 o'clock (keep in mind this is mountain time). We switched to the CNN channel, but it was too late. Unfortunately, the ball had already dropped in New York. Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin were joking around with partying people in the background. I was a little disappointed; I've enjoyed counting down and watching the festivities of New York in the past. Oh well, I guess there's always next year.
The previous night (Dec 30), I had gotten a book from the local library that I had been waiting on the edge of my seat for. I had started it the morning of New Year's Eve, but I wasn't satisfied only reading a few pages. For the next few hours after watching Forrest Gump, I stayed up reading, while the rest of my family went to bed. Being that it was New Year's Eve, there were many bursts of fireworks in the neighborhood and my dog would occasionally jump up without warning and run to a window barking. These were unpleasant interruptions to say the least. Anyway, I think it was about 1 or 1:30 in the morning when I found a reasonable part in the novel to stop and go to bed. Maybe I'm too much of a bookworm...
Yep, that concludes my epic (not really) New Year's Eve Tale. Until next time,
"Life's a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."-Mrs. Gump
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)