Aches and Pains

I'm a bit sore from my activities this weekend.  The activities involved baseball, church, and granola.

On Friday, my office went to watch a professional baseball game during office hours.  We watched the local team, the Baltimore Orioles, get spanked by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.  It was fun to hang out with my coworkers in a more relaxed setting and get to enjoy some of the local scene.  While at the game, I realized that while I'll probably never follow sports, if I did, I'd follow baseball.  The biggest reason is that I knew what was going on the whole time (unlike American Football).  In fact, I even explained the game to the five-year-old son of one of my coworkers without needing any help from anyone.  I have my Grandma Bonnie to thank for that!  Anyway, despite putting on sunscreen, I got sunburned on my arms and right knee (I didn't apply it as well as I thought, apparently).

After the game, I picked up Samuel and we went to help a family in the ward move.  We arrived just in time to help carry their piano down the front steps and up the ramp of the moving truck.  It's a good thing that we arrived when we did since they only had the help of one other brother from the ward and two neighbors.  Six men moving a piano is not very easy but not only did we get it in the truck, we even unloaded it once we got across town.  However, even though I exercise regularly, I am still a bit sore from the move, though not in pain.

On Saturday I made granola.  I was inspired to do so when I made some oatmeal raisin cookie bars that completely crumbled to pieces when I tried to take them out of the pan.  Since granola is mostly oatmeal, I figured it would work out pretty well.  I added slivered almonds, chopped pecans, dried mixed berries (cherries, blueberries, and cranberries), and more oatmeal to the bowl of crumbs and mixed everything together.  For the binder, I heated up a mixture of honey and canola oil and mixed it into the dry ingredients.  Finally, I spread everything out on to two cookie sheets and baked them for an hour and a half at 250, mixing every fifteen minutes.  Once it was all nice and brown, I let everything cool down before I transferred it all to a plastic, air-tight container.  However, in the process of moving the granola (which is quite tasty, by the way), a hardened grain of oatmeal was shoved under my thumbnail and pushed in.  Who knew that cereal could be so painful?!

All in all, it was a fine weekend: one filled with new experiences and service.  I should be recovered by Wednesday or so.