Roman cat of nine tails SCOURGE! / Chinese characters / Quinoa and flax

Henry called to make sure I was going to Awana today - with the last six weeks around here (including Christmas / New Year's break), I don't blame him! We listened to Pastor Greg Laurie's talk on how Jesus died on the cross - apparently, the Roman cat of nine tails whip was a really deadly weapon to scourge people with, and crucifixion was quite common in those times! I appreciate those bits of historical interest, hehe. When we got to the church, I said hi to Rachel's grandma / the kids / Golden / Daniel with his Acer laptop and wireless mouse (I might need one of those at some point!) / Chrystal - yeah, it's been some time since I've been at Awana! Melia was visiting and helping out, so I managed to talk to her a bit about Steph and Lisa - it's good that Lisa's family likes Steph, and our upbringing does make it hard to say certain things! Talked to Chrystal after we'd helped Daniel with the stuff on sale at the Awana store ("plan of salvation" was on bookmarks and NOT cards! / dinosaur sets!) - she'd had a bunch of family in town for Christmas. Daniel had just gone to Hong Kong, and he said that it was too cold there! I also officially met Hien's friend Hung K. - THAT GUY WHO LIKES ALL HER SAD / DEPRESSED FB STATUSES! Golden (who had stayed home on NYE) joked that Hung had a FB reputation now - hahaha, maybe! We talked about jewels, the Gordon Smith talks, the intern pastor doing a new Sunday School class, Fellowship, and more.

Julie C. was also there, and she needed help from Daniel / Eric T. / Auntie Vivian / Ada with her Mandarin homework and writing Chinese characters for a family tree / interests. Luckily, she goes to a Chinese church, otherwise she'd be REALLY screwed when trying to write such stuff as "engineer" and "walking"! Chrystal told me that Julie looked grown up now - I definitely agree, and she's in Grade 9 now! I spent the afternoon eating strawberry / mango / blueberry / grape / cola / apple gummi candies from Hong Kong, and some yok song (shredded pork) balls; those saved the day for me since I ran out of time to eat lunch this afternoon. I told various people about the dense chocolate ganache cake / raspberry-pomegranate Jello ATTACKS of last week, hahaha! (Youtube was also fun, as was seeing various people) Henry left early for a Starfield concert, so it was a good thing Ada was there!

On the way home, Ian asked me questions about the solar system, while Sean opined that he would rather be too hot than too cold. Ian said that he'd made a decision two months ago that HE would rather be too cold than too hot: "you can burn to death in the desert!" Well, you can also freeze to death! We also talked about names, mysteries, their Hong Kong girl cousin Hayden (I once knew a guy named Hayden), exploding in the bathtub (Sean), air-conditioning and butt sweat (TMI from Ian), the Titanic, and more. Once I got home, I quickly checked stuff before going to London Drugs for the second time today: I was out and back within about half an hour, which is always nice! Bought two 2L bottles of healthy Genesis Goji berry / Resveratrol berry juice (which I'd discounted as way too heavy when I was at the store this afternoon), a Chinese New Year rabbit card for Grandma, a three-pack of pink / white / green shower puffs, and two boxes of gluten-free Mesa Sunrise (flax / corn / amaranth) / crunchy vanilla Sunrise (corn / rice / flax / quinoa / buckwheat / amaranth) cereal with Omega-3. Not too bad at all! When I saw my cereal boxes, I noticed that the French word for flax is "lin," which makes me think of Kaitlin... WHEE! The juices each have over 4700 ORAC per serving, whatever ORAC is.