Innovative uses for a coffee stirring stick
Every year my honor society has an induction ceremony where we welcome our new members. Myself and a couple of other students form the local chapter’s executive. Many of us have been organizing the ceremony for a couple of years so we delegate the various tasks among each of us. I send out reminder emails to our 400 new members and handle all the email correspondence. While in Phoenix, AZ, the president and I drafted the speeches and constructed the programme. One of the more span class=”blsp-spelling-corrected” id=”SPELLING_ERROR_0″humorous/span part happened in a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_Valley”Monument Valley/a. We were midway through a three mile hike around a 1000 feet butte and waiting for the morning sun to catch it and admiring the stillness and silence when when my iPhone chirps away. The message was along the line, do I remember how many cakes we bought last year.br /br /Every year there are new challenges and some we can’t seem to solve. The most pressing deals with knives to cut the celebration cake. We always end up by forgetting them in the mad rush. This year was no exception. In the past we have used cardboard, plastic plates and forks. They all work but not very well. While the speeches were going on we had to quickly find a way of cutting and serving cake to 400 people. The solution this year was to slice the cake using wooden coffee stirrers and to us two forks to lift the cake onto the plates. The solution worked and at times it was comical to watch. The students and parents didn’t seem to notice as they were eager for free food and coffee.
Meeting a distant friend
Over the weekend I did something that I have been meaning to do for a while which is to meet a friend from the other side of the globe. Gemma and I have known each other for a couple of years but only formally met in Montreal when our paths crossed recently. A couple of years ago I exchanged emails with the a href=”http://www.goldenkey.canterbury.ac.nz/”New Zealand chapter /aof my a href=”http://www.blogger.com/www.goldenkey.org”honor society/a. Gemma was their communications person and put me in touch with some folks that would be attending the Arizona conference that I attended. We connected again through myspace and finally on Facebook. A while back she commented how she had been able to buy a ticket from New York City to Toronto for $12.00. She would then be heading to Quebec City for a World Youth Summit. I could either meet before or after the summit. Getting together before the summit proved hard to schedule so we opted to meet afterwards. On Friday, met in front of a href=”http://www.blogger.com/www.mcgill.ca”McGill University /aand had supper at a nearby Italian restaurant. [The caesar salad and pizza were great.] We went across the street to a href=”http://www.benjerry.com/”Ben amp; Jerry’s /aice cream as even though she has been in the U.S. for six months she hadn’t experienced the marvelous Vermont ice cream. We concluded the evening talking at a local coffee shop. As the clock was striking midnight, I headed back to Ottawa and she departed for Toronto-New York City-Washington, DC.
News
span lang=”en-us”span style=”font-family:Times New Roman;”My rate of blogging has drop slightly recently but I hope to return to a more normal pace soon. I’ve been busy with school, work, my honour society and training. My next running race is coming up quickly on span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1196891074_0″Boxing Day/span in span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1196891074_1″Hamilton, Ontario/span. It will be the 86thsup/sup edition of the a href=”http://www.boxingdayrun.ca/”Harold Webster 10 mile race/a. The race comes at a good time as the caloric expenditure of the race allows me to eat well during the holidays and not worry about gaining any weight. My plans for New Years aren’t settled but I’m hoping for something special this year. We will have to see. On another matter, I’m working on having an informal mentor. He is someone I have known for a couple of years and is mentoring a couple of other students and I am looking forward to his guidance and advice./span/span
Stamps and awesome workout
When I was growing up my father would sing a famous span style=”font-size:-1;”Flanders and Swann song called, “Mud, Mud Glorious mud.” I did a quick google search and found this a href=”http://www.google.com/url?sa=tamp;ct=resamp;cd=3amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.metacafe.com%2Fwatch%2F95157%2Fmud_glorious_mud%2Famp;ei=xyJOR_2IAZm2ep_IuZQNamp;usg=AFQjCNH8sBcDSliM1Rw8QVEOYINfelGXBgamp;sig2=6UsPdi_ZUp52jIAYRHsQxA”video/a. I guess you could ask what does this have to do with stamps. For the past little while I have been singing my own variation of the song, “Stamps, Stamps, Glorious Stamps.” I recently volunteered to put stamps on membership cards for my a href=”http://www.goldenkey.org”honour society/a. Tonight, I finally finished after putting stamps on 700 envelopes. The chore started out with 300 envelopes but I volunteered to do some more. So, once I had put on a couple of hundred stamps I started to sing the song to keep my focus. It is a relief to get the chore finished.br /br /Tonight, I had an awesome workout. The conditions were a crisp 15F/-9C with a windchill of 3F/-16C. It was the coldest conditions that I have run in this year. I was cold walking down to the canal. Once at the waters edge I started at a fast pace to warm myself up. After two miles I was starting to sweat. For the next five miles I was able to maintain a pace of 85% of my aerobic threshold. The workout felt great.br //span
Golden Key Leadership Retreat
p class=”MsoNormal”span style=”font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;”span style=”font-size: 12pt;”On the weekend I headed down to /span/spanspan style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1195062743_0″Toronto/span for a leadership retreat associated with the a href=”http://www.goldenkey.org”Golden Key Honor Society./a We met at a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/GoldenKey_HartHouseFarm_Nov2007/photo#5132450952709709234″Hart House /aon the University of Toronto campus and then took the bus up to the a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/GoldenKey_HartHouseFarm_Nov2007/photo#5132451356436635314″Hart House farm/a which is about an 45 minute drive north. I came representing the Ottawa chapter, and a couple of people came from Alberta with the majority of the people coming from span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1195062743_1″Toronto/span. Over the weekend we went hiking, played capture the flag in the dark and did a couple of leadership exercises. Our first task was to split into two teams and come up with a team name and chant. My team was called “Mas cash” which was based on the first letter in our given name while the other team was called “the Wonka Nerds.” During one of our breaks we hiked around the property and explored the caves/a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/GoldenKey_HartHouseFarm_Nov2007/photo#5132451158868139602″cliffs /aas well as take some novel pictures (a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/GoldenKey_HartHouseFarm_Nov2007/photo#5132451249062452866″people arranged by height/a). We each took the a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator”Myers-Brigg personality test/a and determined our leadership styles. It was fun adventure and gave me a chance to network with people from different chapters./p p class=”MsoNormal”span style=”font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;”span style=”font-size: 12pt;” (a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/GoldenKey_HartHouseFarm_Nov2007″main photo gallery)/abr //span/span/p
