Volleyball Take 2

Well, we played Friday night.  We lost miserably.  We did have fun though.  The team we lost to ended up winning the whole tournament so we kind of got 3rd place, right? 

Anyway, besides for the volleyball and it snowing a lot right now not much has changed since Thursday.  Well, I take that back.  I did manage to make a chocolate sheet cake today.  It is quite tasty.  I hope that I don't eat it all and can take it to small group on Tuesday.  I'll probably want some cake or brownies to take with me to Tulsa so I may have to bake again on Wednesday, and I'll need to bake a loaf of bread so that I can make a sandwich to take with me on the airplane!  I'm super excited -- the bread is denser than most, but I can make pb&j to take with me places now.  Portable food that doesn't require a microwave is a small miracle in my opinion as most of my food is always left-overs. 

Anyway, more volleyball pictures...

A crazy week so far

So this week has been a crazy week.  It started out Monday with us accidentally turning the alarm off.  When we realized that we had 20 minutes to get ready and get to the train station it got a bit hectic.  Way to start a week.  Anyway, since I have a less stringent schedule about when I have to be at work and we made it to the train station about a minute before the train did, I told Chris to get on the train, I'd just take the next one.  I ended up missing the train, but getting to watch the sunrise.  It was a pretty sunrise with clouds everywhere because we were slated to get snow and stuff.  I saw these ice crystals on the window of a shelter.  I thought they looked like the sun and was able to get the sun in them as it was low enough.  This was sunrise on Monday morning.  The burst pattern isn't one of the ice crystal forms I've seen very often so it was neat that I got to see it this way.

Today I took a biochemistry test.  It reminded me of doing the fact master tests in elementary school.  (For facts masters you had to do the math facts in a set amount of time) We had 13 pages of biochemistry structures to draw in 75 minutes.  I ended up being done in 45 minutes.  This means I did really well or really poorly.  I'm thinking its the first as it was pretty much the exact same test as previous semesters.  And it wasn't like it is possible to substitute that many DNA bases into the problem -- I had a 1 in 4 shot to begin with on getting the same one. 

Tomorrow night are the volleyball semi-finals and finals.  Hopefully we'll win again and be champions!  We can do it if we continue to play like we have the past few weeks.  We have to go in and know we're going to win, and have a LOT of energy.  We've got a lot of people so that helps because we've got sheer numbers on our side.  We'll see though.  Chris is going to go be photographer again so hopefully we'll get some more fun shots that I can post this week.

Baking of cinnamon goo

Well, in traditional weekend form, I'm attempting to make something I've been craving with ingredients that I can eat.  I normally sit down and look at about a dozen recipes, each leaving one of my ingredients out and then make up my own.  For instance, I look at a gluten free recipe, then a yeast free recipe, then one that doesn't involve shortening of any form, and one that doesn't involve a lot of milk, etc. and put something together.  Normally I've done okay, but today I failed spectacularly.  I failed in making cinnamon rolls, but succeeded in making something that right now smells very very yummy.  The dough was too wet to roll so it just kind of gooed up in the middle when I went to roll them.  Thankfully I decided that I wanted to make them in muffin tin, so I'll turn out with cinnamon goo infused muffins.  I do plan on icing them, but I definitely don't think that they are cinnamon rolls. 

Well, they did turn out okay.  They are like a cinnamon crumb cake more or less.  But I can eat it :)  Here are a few pictures after cooking and then after icing. Also, there is a reason that the cinnamon mixture in cinnamon rolls goes on the inside -- if it is on the outside it get burned!  Sugar at 375 for 10 minutes becomes a nice carbon char.  They taste good though! 

This week overall has been interesting.  Tuesday we got about a foot of snow.  Not that unusual except that Wednesday morning we had an earthquake.  It was a 3.8 quake in a suburb fairly close to ours.  It happened about 4 am and I felt it, but since the plows were out trying to get rid of the foot of snow on the roads and in the parking lot, I just assumed one had hit our building or something.  Wednesday morning was one for the books though -- we had the earthquake, we couldn't sleep because of the plows (they make the back-up beeping noise which is not very conducive to sleep), another train on our line hit a car that had slid onto the tracks and slowed us down getting into downtown -- and this was all between 4 and 7 am.  The sun did come out though, and it was a pretty day, but it was a long one for sure. 

School wise things are going.  This Thursday I have my first biochemistry exam.  We'll see how it goes.  I think I'll be okay as long as I don't freak out and remember to do things like count bonds to each atom. 

A bit of Volleyball

With the 20s-30s at church I've been playing volleyball.  We've been playing since sometime in October and the play-offs are upon us.  Last night we managed to do fairly well for the first game, got creamed the second game, and creamed the other team the last game.  At least going into the final game having won one and lost one we still had something to play for.  Chris went with me to the game (we braved the icy roads and managed to not hit any curbs, but did some car skating when no one was around.  It was a sudden storm and came with a lot of wind) and took along the camera.  He got some good shots, so here are a few.  He said it was a lot of fun, even if kind of frustrating to work on composing the frame well.  Most of the problems with blur are from the film speed being to slow, so I've got to figure out how to change that on the fly.  We did end up winning the match though so in two weeks we get to play again.  Hopefully in two weeks we'll play 2 games -- and win them both and therefore win the league. 

Carolyn and and other girl ready for play.

 

A good shot of a good serve.

 

We scored a point! 

 

Working with using all three touches, and someone successfully spiking the set from Carolyn. 

 

A team picture.  Since we had everyone there plus a few extras we decided having a team pic would be good.  These are the people we hang out with a lot -- they are our small group from church and so we see them several times a week.  

Any comments on any of the pictures -- from composition or what you think the problem with blur is, please let me know!