Sleep, South African Fizzer candy, romantic lines, organization, Summer Conference 2000, boards

Talked to my friend Christon at church.. we both figured we had only ourselves to blame for sleeping later than we should have on a Saturday night, and then feeling tired the next day! My friend Maxine hailed me, and gave me a stick of Fizzer candy from South Africa. I'd emailed her husband Tim about it some time ago, since someone wanted to know what this South African candy was called. (because they're both from South Africa, I figured they'd probably know... yes, there ARE Chinese people in South Africa... like Maxine's cousins Amanda and Brenda!)

Nathan and Citrus were trying to outdo each other with "romantic lines" at our Pho lunch, after Nate made a comment about hot flashes. They came up with a bunch (and so did I): "You are the fire, and you're my desire;" "You burn like the fire of ten thousand suns;" "You are the igneous to my magma;" "You are like volcanic fire, and your hair is like ashes that fall from the lava;" "Every girl at this table is hot;" etc. (Nathan blames his counselling practicum at Trinity, of all things... Jen, Danielle, and I were NOT impressed! Dawn wouldn't have been, either.. she had to leave early.)

Citrus almost puked in his food since he ate too fast.. they DID pack a lot of meat into a small bowl, and even Danielle couldn't finish hers! But we also had spring rolls, which might have contributed to it. Citrus made a comment about organizing big events like Summer / Winter Conferences and church-wide anniversaries / dinners... that's a lot of work, and Nathan will retire from ticket-selling after this round! I've heard stories from my mom... there are always people who want certain rooms / to stay with certain others, AFTER everything is already pretty much finalized! Makes it harder, for sure.. I don't envy them their jobs of service, even though it may be a huge help!

Then we got to talking about Summer Conference 2000 at Trinity with four churches... the congee got bigger every day, since the cafeteria staff added the leftovers from every meal into it. (ham from breakfast, rice from lunch, etc.) The overall food quality was just bad.. no other way to describe it! We had sour juice, powdered milk, rubbery eggs, stale Hash Browns... it got so bad that Denise called Jon on his cell (he had to go back to town for a Canada Day gig on the second day), and got him to order us all pizza! Someone also ordered pizza the next night for everyone, as well. (very interesting times... we were very thankful for the lunch of "real food" we had at a Chinese restaurant after we left that place!)

Citrus and I went back to church for a while... we "helped" Cordia, Quan, and Joyce with their redesign of a bulletin board by offering constructive criticism such as "That doesn't look like a tree... it looks like a POLE! Thanks for cluing in to the fact that it needs more than one branch!" But we did staple hearts / cherry blossoms to the board, so that was good.

I don't think I'm going to Vernon and Sarah's tonight unless something miraculous comes up in the next two hours. As it is, I'm trying to convince Corey that Pho isn't that bad... despite the fact that it might have tripe, fat, tendons, and other not-so-savory stuff in it! So we'll see...