Rank Brunch etc.
Today, I cooked brunch for my rank in the MVs. The menu was pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs, plus some fruits and a wide selection of milk and juice. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the most TALENTED in the kitchen. I'm not the worst cook either, but I usually am not the most efficient when it comes to getting a meal cooked. Anyway, this was the largest group of people I've ever even thought about cooking for (with a grand total of 10 mouths to feed), so when I went to kroger to buy the ingredients I had a hard time predicting how much stuff I'd need. So I bought what seemed like A TON of food: One large box of bisquick, 30 eggs, 2 packs of bacon (i think each had about 15-20 slices), 1 quart of whole milk, 1 quart of 1% milk, 1 quart of chocolate milk, 1 jug of pulp-free OJ, and 1 jug of 'medium pulp' OJ.... 2 boxes of strawberries, 2 boxes of blueberries, a thing of butter, and a jug of Aunt Jemima's Maple Syrup (I accidently picked up the 'lite' bottle instead of original... DOH... oh well it still tasted fine). We made about 4 batches of the pancake mix, used 15 eggs for the scrambled eggs, and one pack of bacon. But everything seemed to be eaten pretty well... I bought way too much bacon, but most everything else was mostly used up.... I left with a little bit left in each of the milks and OJ's, but not much.... I have about a half dozen eggs now, about a quarter of the box of bisquick and both of my boxes of blueberries... apparently nobody likes that fruit.

Even though I started off a little rough on the first set of pancakes, everything turned out really well and at least the stuff I had tasted quite good if I might say so.... I might have to make some more pancakes some weekend for myself..... AND I did manage to not burn down Vinny's apartment, so that's always a plus.

Anyway, tomorrow starts the 4th week of the semester and tests are most definitely on the way (though I had my first one on Wednesday). I'm really enjoying my classes this year (you know, as much as one can enjoy Classes); its really cool to be learning specifics (FINALLY) on how these things work. In high school, I was in this elective at one of my schools called "Aerodynamics"; in this class, we had to design, build, and test fly a wing design. The program we used to select the airfoil (or cross-sectional) shape of the wing gave us all these really pretty plots that we all used in our final project display, but none of us really understood what they really meant. Well, in my aerodynamics class now, I'm learning how to derive the formulae to make those plots and what it all means! I think that's really exciting.

Band is going really well. The horn section is a blast as usual. Check out the horn webpage I put together for this year.... www.mvhorns.org.vt.edu


In Nav's this year, our Bible study is focusing on the TMS (Topical Memory System). Each week we learn about 2 verses that follow a certain topic. For the first part of the study the verses relate to the "Nav Wheel". This is an illustration that uses a wheel. At the center (the hub) is Christ (hence the first topic = "Christ the Center". Then the two vertical spokes are dealing with our relationship with God: Prayer and God's Word. The two horizontal spokes deal with our relationships with others: Witnessing and Fellowship. Then the rim represents our obedience to Christ: this is putting everything into action in our lives. Each of the topics (the hub, the 4 spokes, and the rim) have 2 related verses. Then we'll go onto similar types of sets of verses. As we learn the verses we read the surrounding text to get an idea of the context and stuff like that...

That's what's going on in my life though....