pie madness ‘07!

well, after the wild success of last week’s cheesecake bake-off, we decided it was time for a repeat–and so on saturday we held pie madness 2007 at 1321! we went from three entrants last week to eight this time, and we had probably 25 people come to vote.

after seeing the wild success of the past two weeks, we’re forming a league, with points, winners, losers, the chance for eternal glory or unspeakable shame. first through third place get points for victory, and each entry gets one point for participation. tinsley and whitney’s tollhouse pie and sarah’s apple pie got first and second, respectively, which i chalk up to the home court advantage.

this time elise joined claire and i to make two ice cream pies. unfortunately due to some technical issues, we couldn’t get our homemade ice cream to freeze, so our pies were fairly, uh, liquid. we told people that we were working with some experimental materials, making a really avant-garde piece, trying to redefine the whole pie genre. needless to say, it didn’t go over too well with the judges. we didn’t get a single vote.

cheesecake madness ‘07!

at tuesday/thursday lunch bunch the other day i told everyone about matt and justin’s cheesecake. and we got to talking, and decided that we needed to make our own cheesecakes. and then we decided that we needed to have a competition, because anything worth doing in life should be competitive. hence cheesecake madness ‘07!

we had three teams compete: nick and john with a new york key lime, sandy with an oreo bar, and claire and i with an organic (that’s right!) sour cream raspberry. we invited friends over to be judges, distributed slices to all, and voted. this is america. in the words of nick, “there will be a winner and a loser by the end of the evening, none of that relativistic we’re-all-winners liberal crap!”

unfortunately, the voting didn’t go the way we hoped–sandy won first, while nick, john, claire, and i all tied for second. i’m just kidding, all the cakes were so good. the competition thing was just a joke (in case you are like me and don’t understand sarcasm). it was sooo much fun, and i was glad we had all those people to share it with. supposedly a pie bake-off is next, so get excited!

pigskin!

it’s the second day of pigskin practice and i am already killing myself. between tests, homework, projects, reading, rehearsal, and after dark, i have had hardly any time to sleep, buy groceries, and eat, much less spend time with people. i’ve scheduled my past few days by the hour, from the moment i wake up to the moment i go to sleep, just so that i can keep it all straight in my mind!

and so i can’t tell if coffee helps or hurts this all. for example: last night i got back from practice around 11:30 and needed to study for a test this morning at 8. i make a big cup of coffee. by midnight i am in the zone, powering through thermodynamics and sustainability. it gets around to 1:30 and i decided it’s time for bed. and then i lay in bed for two hours, waiting for the caffeine to wear off. i wake up at 6:30, groggy and tired because of the caffeine the night before. and so i make another cup of coffee to combat the caffeine hangover. see my dilemma?

part of the problem is that i work best under pressure, but unfortunately about a million and one things are happening this week. so i hope that things slow down and get more spread out. soon. for my own sanity.

prayer from church today

so today i read the prayer in church, which was really neat. it was by gregory of nazianzus, sometime in the fourth century.

O transcendent, almighty God,
What words can sing your praises?
No tongue can describe you.
No mind can probe your mystery.
Yet all speech springs from you,
And all thought stems from you.
All creation proclaims you,
All creatures revere you.
Every gust of wind breathes a prayer to you,
Every rustling tree sings a hymn to you.
All things are upheld by you.
And they move according to your harmonious design.
The whole world longs for you,
And all people desire you.
Yet you have set yourself apart,
You are far beyond our grasp,
You are the purpose of all that exists,
But you do not let us understand you.
Lord, we want to speak of you.
By what name shall we call you?

i thought this was kind of neat, because in sunday school we talked about free will, it seems that the peril of man is that we have free will. the prayer says: “Every gust of wind breathes a prayer to you, / Every rustling tree sings a hymn to you.” and this is interesting, because these other creations have no choice in their worship. man, on the other had has to choose, which is really amazing because God knows that we can refuse Him, but he lets us choose anyways.

the last song before the prayer kept repeating “you never let go, you never let go” which is a really nice response to the last words of the prayer: “Yet you have set yourself apart.” even though he has set himself apart, he is still there believing in us even when we don’t believe in him.