2008 Fun Run Stats

GHIORSO-MIFFLIN SACRAMENTO THANKSGIVING DAY CELEBRITY TOXIC POTATO AWARENESS FUN RUN TO PREVENT SOLANINE POISONING

56 degrees outside

35 pictures (we are digitally obsessed)

42 minute finish time (me) (4th place)

26 post-run bagels

13 runners (2 remote, 4 for the walk, 7 for the run)

6 repeat runners from last year

4.3 mile run/2 mile walk

3 packages of t-shirt iron-on paper

2 brothers pep talking my sister out of bed to run

2 years in a row Nathan finishes first

1 map: http://www.mapmyrun.com/route/us/ca/fair%20oaks/822001420761

1 Great morning

2nd Annual G.M.S.T.D.C.T.P.A.F.R.T.P.S.P.

That is right: G.M.S.T.D.C.T.P.A.F.R.T.P.S.P.
This stands for:
GHIORSO-MIFFLIN SACRAMENTO THANKSGIVING DAY CELEBRITY TOXIC POTATO AWARENESS FUN RUN TO PREVENT SOLANINE POISONING

Did you know potatoes can be poisonous? If they are green they could contain harmful amounts of solanine, very dangerous.

Tomorrow morning, 12 brave souls will be running to raise awareness of the harms of green potatoes and solanine poisoning.

Here is our logo I designed. (I'll keep my day job, don't worry.)

Tomorrow I will post race results and pictures. And maybe even throw something in there about thankfullness. Possibly.

PS: Wondering what all this craziness is about? Reference: Season 4 (2007) Episode 1 of "The Office" and the Dunder-Mifflin Fun Run.

For the sake of crazy cookies!

I am writing this blog as I make cookies. After everything I have gone through up to this point (the first batch are nearly ready to emerge from the oven), I am PRAYING that my Martha Stewart attempts are successful.

I got this recipe from my awesome friend Alicia who I have known since going to Redwood. (9 years, if anyone is counting.) I bought all the ingredients the other day at the store. This morning I started to copy the recipe off email and realized I was missing brown sugar and peanut butter. I'm taking these to 20's retreat this weekend, so, if anyone is going to be friends with me then I better make some darn good cookies. Meeting people is already tough enough without poisoning them or noticing them spit your cookie out into the trash.

After an hour of humming and hawing about the wet weather outside I decide resolutely that I am walking the dog to 7-Eleven (quarter mile away) for PB and brown sugar. At this exact moment, it is drizzling pretty hard. But, once I make up my mind, right or wrong, I stick with it. So I walk. 7-Eleven does not have brown sugar. I wonder...should I get the PB and just substitute white sugar for brown? I decide yes. On the way back I decide I will walk to a farther destination, a nearby friend, to see if anyone is home to borrow brown sugar. (Still raining.) No one was home.

I get home and google "brown sugar substitutes" and read that you can substitute white sugar, but the white sugar is drier and won't provide as much flavor. Well, I can't go bringing dry flavorless cookies to a 20's retreat. So I decide to go to the nearest bigger store. Walgreens. Also no brown sugar there. At this point with various distractions it has been about two hours since I started on the cookie mixing. *Sheesh.* So finally I end up at Safeway.

Finally onto baking.

So these cookies are a Reese's variation on the christmas cookies where you put a Hershey Kiss on a peanut butter cookie. Same concept, but you bake the cookie in mini muffin tins and shove the Reese's peanut butter cup in the middle after baking for a little muffin looking treat.

Chocolate does not photograph well. I learned this attempting to be artsy (Lisa L. style) by snapping a "while I'm baking" picture.

These cookies are not fun. I suck at this. (I'm writing this midway through baking.) Self-portraits are a requirement though if I ever scrapbook this event since I'm already taking pictures.

Ok, just took the last ones out. I started to get better by the end.

I think I still prefer snickerdoodles. Or regular peanut butter cookies.

Update. I made another batch because I was worried about quantity. I mean seriously. Could 40 (good ones) really be enough? So the newer batch mixed like a champ, much softer than the first batch (led me to panic: Were the first ones good??!!) but I am just going to get over it, take them all, and hope they disappear.

x

Saturday

Saturday. Today did not feel like a weekend. The day started with me filling in as volunteer coordinator for our site. After collecting a bunch of forms and handling 19 unexpected eagle scout volunteers, I quicly realized sitting around at a table all day wasn't going to work. So I abandoned my post in order to keep people busy, inspect the construction, finish up some sheetrock, and various other odds and ends.



For this I was demoted from volunteer coordinator. SHUCKS. My co-AIM team left today, and this was a very sad occurance! I am so glad to have met them and spent time with them and so grateful God provided me with some peers on site to bond with over the trip. And they were very hard workers and we have some great inside jokes (so common for all mission trips, right?!)



In the afternoon my food distribution task was to count cars and passengers. 295 cars, 547 passengers. This job in itself is incredibly dull but when you cound backfilling as traffic controller, walk-in station aid, espanol translator, and some more volunteer delegating, the time passed quickly. All the day volunteers are friendly and eager to work. Today we had mostly families with kids and those kids were major troopers! Throwing around cases of canned goods with the finesse of a wii controller or something like that.



One of the AIM employees keeps trying to convince me to stay here as a coordinator. Believe me, I wish I could figure out a way to do that...I may have to do some logistics analysis to see if I can come back at Thanksgiving or something.



Again, sorry for the short post. I am just so tired. God is so good.





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Friday

Thanks everyone for the awesome emails and messages. They have been so encouraging.

Today has been crazy and I think we still haven't stopped but I will say, today I cur sheetrock for about 8 hours straight. And somewhere in the middle of that I learned how to measure correctly. Its been crazy. And we just got fed by some Billy Graham ministry that included some "wise" women (grandmas) singing us some beautiful songs that included choreography. It would probably be mean to be sarcastic at this point in a very public blog so I will just say, those women love the Lord.

I don't have time to write much else tonight right now but if anyone wants a 6 month job in Galveston, let me know. :). Until then the AIM folks are thinking I am going to do the job which is definitely not true.

Miss y'all!!

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Thursday and important survey!

Here is the survey: could you, or could you not, sleep in a builfding where a dead man is resting in the embalming room. I will tell you my answer: I guess - could (or will have to) along with about 20 other new friends. Puh-leeze leave a comment on here and tell me if you can handle that.



Back to seriousness:



God and I had some great negotiating today. I had been dying to tape the newly constructed walls we put up, but I couldn't remember how. So basically today I started anyhow and 2 ppl showed me what to do then - got about 3 other people to help me. An hour later a professional showed up and improved on our technique. Nonetheless, God let me work in the arena I wanted to work.



After lunch was paybacks. I was assigned to pray with cars who were entering the food distribution line. Me. The one with a stranger phobia, amongst many other problems. :) However, I accepted the challenge and...discovered...I really liked it. Well, I mean it was a great growth opportunity for me and - really valued my 1-2 minute conversations I had with the people in line. Out of the 140 or so cars I hit, very few declined prayer (although I did pracice my spanish several times! "Vamos a orar"). I laughed partway through about how I eas enjoying (shockingly) being an extrovert. 4 hours was a long time though and the last 2 were brutal but another staffer was working with me and we didn't really have the option to quit since the line never stopped.



In other news, 8 more volunteers have arrived, 7 of them that run an adventure/sports camp outside of Austin. We bonded easily over some cutthroat Phase 10 and I am glad to have some volunteers my age.



Ok. I've been typing for a long time now. I miss everyone, am laughing at all the comments, and going inside now for evening debrief.



Christy







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Day 3

Today is Wednesday, right? Today I ruined (no, "enhanced") my best thrift store/mission trip/painting shorts. Happily. Passing out bleach during food distribution.

Ok back to serious. (If I am capable of that blogging...thinking...thinking...yes sometimes I am serious). Ok today was my second full day. The morning was kind of slow with construction projects so I took a drive around to view some of the destruction. I have texted Christal 3 pictures and she is putting them up on her blog (the link to "Christal" on the side of this page. ) The pictures are of a gas station, a house, and McDonalds drive thru. Its tough to paint a picture with a mediocre camera phone.

I can 100% feel the effects of all y'alls prayers. Like yesterday I went to bed with a minor injury I figured I woud just live with for a few days. This morning: zero pain. Thank you.

The community ministries continue to be primarily food distribution at this time. Today we served over 200 cars with water, cleaning supplies, tea, popcorn, and Nutrisystem foods donated from a food bank. (Side note: those meals are tiny. No wonder celebrities lose 1,000 baby pounds in 15 minutes when on that diet. ). There are 3 food distribution sites in the area but we are the largest and we usually have ice.

7 more volunteers with AIM showed up today and are staying thru Saturday, so it will be cool to have some non-staff around and maybe they'll put us on a demolition team or something. I spoke at length with the AIM staff last night, having a very scary discussion about my dreams of missions and such.

Evenings are by far the quietest time. After dinner is when I do this - write my blog- and guiltily check facebook. I wish I could run outdoors here but the neighborhood really isn't safe. The one night we didn't have the guys pullinh night security shifts, one of the RV's got their gas siphoned. Usually I just read/write/reflect and when in doubt: sweep. There is always something to clean around here.

I have a hundred more stories about a discovery or awesome way God works, but there is a limit to my typing patience. Plus, there are 3 more days to go!

As always you can comment, email, text me, whatevs to say what's up.

Blessings,
Christy

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