The first bleat of my alarm snatched me out of sleep at 6:30 Saturday morning. I hastily switched it off and jumped out of bed. After dithering a bit about what to wear, I dressed, grabbed my bags, ate a quick breakfast, and set out. It was still dark and cold. Walking the block from my house to the subway station, I was glad I'd worn my woolly hat.

The train rushed in just as I entered the platform. There were more people on board than I expected for such an early hour, scattered loosely about the car, many dozing. I thought of that saying, "The city never sleeps."

At my station, I came out into the cold blue city, emerging slowly from the dawn. The grey buildings were almost at one with the grey-blue sky. The hot dog-stand man was asleep, just a slumped-over hood behind the ketchup and mustard pumps. I was in plenty of time to buy my ticket and board the coach. I hesitated about whether to go and buy a coffee or to wait inside, and decided against both.

There was already a longish queue at the boarding platform; more people than I thought take the New York bus in the early hours of the weekend. A Pakistani family collected behind me, jabbering animatedly, I gathered, over whether this was their bus.

As I stood waiting, I decided to knit. I pulled my yarn and needles from the bag and began fruitlessly hunting for the pattern. Drat, I realized, I left it at home. Oh well, I think I remember enough of it to keep me going for a while.

Then, a much more horrifying realization hit. I had forgotten my passport and my permanent resident card. I stood uselessly in line for another moment. There was no way to retrieve them in time; the bus was boarding in fifteen minutes. Conceding defeat, I left the queue and went back inside. Without those documents, I'd simply be turned back at the border. Even if the Americans let me in, the Canadians wouldn't on my return.

A ticket agent informed me that the next bus was leaving at 10 and arriving at 3, too late to make it for my sister's bridal shower/going away party. After a disappointed phone call to my other sister, who'd been scheduled to pick me up, I explained my predicament to another agent. He mumbled something that I gathered meant they couldn't refund my ticket, but could cancel the transaction. Somebody else would have to do it, who was now on break. As I waited for him to return, I weighed my options. Probably the only way I could get there in time was a car rental. If I left at 10, I'd arrive by 2, just in time for the party. In any case, I'd have to go home first to pick up my documents.

As I walked back across the parking lot from the subway station to my house, a feeble but warm light from the east touched the tops of the buildings, promising a golden day. A rich carpet of amber-gold leaves covered my neighbours' path thickly. Back inside, I booted up my computer and searched for car rentals, only to be confronted with the notice, "International car rentals require a 24-hour advance reservation period."

So that was that. I was stuck in Toronto. Maybe I'd go back to sleep.

Just then, a friend struck up an IM conversation. "I'm not working this weekend, so I'll be able to go to church tomorrow."

"So will I :(," I responded.

"Why the frown?"

I explained my situation.

"You can borrow my car," he immediately responded. "Hold on, just let me ask my wife."

A moment later he was back with the news that it was fine with her. Half an hour later he was at my door with the car, and at 10:00 I was on the road. Four hours of a beautiful autumnal drive later, I walked into my parents' house precisely on time to confront some very surprised relatives.

It was a nice weekend with family, and I got to see my brand-new nephew, only 6 days old. But that's a story for another time. In the meantime, I do wonder if I'll ever grow out of being so absentminded...

Last night, I was sitting outside knitting. I was waiting until a specified time when I was supposed to meet someone at their apartment, so, having arrived early I did what I always do when I have a knitting project on the go and a bit of spare time: pulled it out and started working.

Suddenly I heard, "That is the cutest thing I have ever seen!"

I looked up, confused. An extremely good-looking Chinese guy was standing there smiling at me. Tall, well built, very cute.

"What, knitting?" I laughed.

"Knitting in front of an apartment building. What are you doing here?"

We started chatting and exchanging flirtatious banter. I have to admit it was a bit flattering: it's been a long time since a cute guy flirted with me.

"So, tell me something about yourself," he invited.

"Well, I knit."

"I know that! Tell me something I don't know."

I paused for a moment. I had a choice. Do I tell him the most important thing about myself, something guaranteed to stop the flirting and frighten him away, or do I give in to the flattery and say something lighthearted and inconsequential?

"I'm a Christian," I said.

His smile froze. He went silent. He looked at me warily.

"I thought I'd tell you the most scary thing about me," I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

"That is scary," he said. "Are you, like, a hardcore Christian? I've had a lot of conversations with hardcore Christians, because I'm a Buddhist."

"Oh yeah?" I asked him a few questions about his Buddhism, and he asked me about my Christianity. I told him what it meant to me to be a Christian. I left him with a card from my church with my phone number on it.

Somehow, I don't think I'll be hearing from him. But hopefully, the conversation meant something more than a random flirt. Hopefully, God's on his case and tracking him down. I don't know. I prayed for him.

Sometimes being a Christian is harder than others. Like, scaring away the first cute guy in ages to flirt with you by talking with him about Jesus. It hardly qualifies as suffering for the gospel. Nonetheless, I have to admit that there was a little twinge of regret. Ah well. Maybe I can start up a ministry: street evangelism to cute guys. With knitting.

I got onto the subway car. I sat down in the only available seat, next to a very sunburnt, red-skinned man in a wife-beater and jeans. I immediately semi-regretted it. He apparently hadn’t showered or applied deodorant recently.

He turned to me. “Pretty cool on the subway,” he said.

I agreed. “Cooler than outside.”

He laughed. “I might just ride the subway all day.”

“That’s one way to stay in the air conditioning.”

“Cheaper than air-conditioning your house.”

I agreed, and there was a pause.

“I’m going to the Writer’s Guild at U of T,” he told me.

“Sounds interesting. What happens there?”

“It’s for writers. People who write poetry and fiction. They get together and critique each others’ work. I pretty much have to go there every Friday. This week, Maggie McDonald is going to be speaking. In honour of her, I bought 5 liters of wine and 10 pounds of smoke—“ I thought he was going to say “smokes”, but he continued “d oysters, and five different kinds of black olives.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Yeah, and I got these!” He reached into his bag and pulled out a bag of tortilla chips. “They’re called ‘Scoopers’. You can see how you could put a smoked mussel into the center, like that…”

“Smoked mussels, I’ve never had those before,” I said.

“Smoked oysters, I mean,” he amended.

“I’ve never tried those either.”

My stop was announced, and I got up. “This is my stop, take care,” I said.

He reached into his bag and pulled out a pink-and-white box, which he thrust at me. “Here, take these,” he said. I looked at them. It was a box of smoked oysters.

“Why?” I protested, but he insisted. “Just take them!”

I got off the train and left the station, unable to stop laughing, with a pink-and-white box of smoked oysters in my hand. The city is such a strange place sometimes.

The smoked oysters were disgusting. But it makes a good story, and it was certainly a kind gesture.

The crazy guy who puts out his hand for a high-five as he approaches me on his bicycle on the sidewalk, swipes it away for a brief "psych!" moment, then puts it back so our pinkies just brush as he goes by.

I'm still high from an absolutely fabulous weekend at the Newfrontiers Canada leadership conference. We had great worship, great teaching from Chris McLean, Roger Bye, and Joe Crummey, and wonderful fellowship as we prayed for and spent time with one another.

The most exciting bit was our visitors from Montreal. There is a group of young people there who are experiencing a real move of the Holy Spirit. Kids are getting saved, filled with the Holy Spirit, and healed. They're not formed into an official "church" per se, but they meet for worship, prayer and fellowship. God has brought about a connection with Newfrontiers in Canada, with the purpose of encouraging and helping them in whatever ways that we can.

Two of the young people who came from Montreal were guys who have only within the past few weeks been saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. Both quit drugs, alcohol, and smoking. One had been so violent and badly behaved that parents wouldn't allow their children to hang out with him. Now he's passionate about Jesus and they're both growing and radically changed.

I personally feel that God has given me a connection with them and I feel an urge to help them, pray for them, and do whatever I can to support them. I'm deeply grateful for their friendship, prayers, and encouragement to me.

The weekend ended rather spectacularly with a sledding trip to Toronto's Riverdale Park. The weather has been warm lately and many people have been sledding, so the hill is quite slick and icy. Somebody built a jump at the bottom, and several of us hit it, with predictably disastrous results. One guy has his arm in a sling, one girl had the wind knocked out of her, one guy has his back and foot hurt...and I'm sure there are more I haven't heard about.

I hit the jump on my first run, went flying into the air, parted with the sled, did several revolutions in the air, landed on my back, had the sled land on top of me and then bounce off. I felt fine yesterday but today have symptoms of a mild concussion: a quite peculiar feeling. No more sled jumps for me!

I am a klutz.

Yesterday I had to run a number of errands, among them buying a new blender for my roommate, whose blender pitcher I shattered by dropping it on the floor. I returned successfully with a new blender, which hadn't cost too much. Mission accomplished.

I then decided to make a small lunch to tide me over until my evening run. I settled on soft-boiled eggs and toast. I popped my toast into the toaster oven, set the dial, and returned to my computer to keep working till it was done.

Now, I am convinced our toaster oven is haunted by gremlins. It used to be that setting it to five minutes resulted in toast that was slightly done on one side, still cold on the other. Recently, it has been slightly burning toast around the edges when set to that time. However, I set the timer to five minutes.

A few minutes later, I began to smell burning. I returned to the kitchen to check on my toast. What I saw was appalling.

The toaster oven had turned into a mini-fireplace. A large and bright orange flame was slowly feeding off one piece of toast, which had turned into a black cinder. Black smoke was curling out of the cracks of the toaster oven.

I quickly a) grabbed a glass with some water; b) carefully unplugged the toaster; c) gingerly opened the door (which resulted in the flame getting bigger); and d) splashed water on the black cinder. It sizzled, and thankfully, completely extinguished the flame.

The toaster oven had scorch marks all along the inside. I hoped it was unharmed. However, I got up this morning (well, this afternoon really) to find the toaster oven sitting on the floor and an email from my roommate saying that it was dead. She'd tried it and the top element started smoking. Not a good sign.

So now I have to buy a new toaster oven. Perhaps I'll go back to the same place where yesterday I bought the blender.

Finally, I went for my run. I was about a mile from home on my 5-mile loop when my eyes briefly registered an irregular patch on the sidewalk. A millisecond later, my toe registered it; and a millisecond after that, I was lying sprawled and stunned on the cold sidewalk with a great shooting pain in my elbow, which had absorbed the force of the fall.

A man was coming along the sidewalk, so I pulled myself up to a sitting position to try to regain some semblance of dignity. He stopped. "Are you OK?" I looked up into a concerned face surrounded by the hood of a black down jacket.

"I think so," I said. "My elbow hurts, but I think it'll be ok. I'm just going to stay here for a minute."

"Do you want a hand up?"

"That might be a good idea." And he extended a hand and helped me up, then walked off with several admonitions to "take it slowly" and profuse thanks from me.

I walked around for a minute, then started slowly jogging home. The elbow pain had mostly subsided. When I got home I found it was bruised and scraped, but otherwise ok. And thanks to some application of arnica cream, today it doesn't even hurt very much.

Oi. Sometimes I wonder how I make it through life.

Overheard in Toronto:

Guy, walking down street, to his girlfriend: "...this is America we live in!"

(To do him credit, this is the only part of the conversation I overheard. For all I know, he might have been quoting somebody.)

The other day, I was talking with my mom on the phone. We chat every week or two, and she fills me in on the family news.

This time, one of her major news items was that my dad had hit a deer with his truck. Thankfully, the damage wasn't severe, just some denting to the grill and a loosening of the front lights.

I couldn't bring myself to ask. But she saved me the trouble.

"He took it to the processor, but we don't know how much meat we'll get out of it. The guy said that it looked pretty much undamaged, but they can't tell till they take the skin off."

Roadkill. As viable food source. Sometimes the wonderful oddity of the life I've come from strikes me.

What struck me even more, though, was the fact that this not only seemed perfectly normal to me, but totally sensible. After all, why pass up an entire deer's worth of meat, simply because it was killed by a truck instead of a bullet?

Makes sense, right?

People seem amusingly confused sometimes about exactly what "meat" means. Two conversations within a week of each other:

1. At rehearsal dinner for wedding #1:

Friend: Is this soup vegetarian?

Waitress: Yes. It's made from beef broth and vegetables.

2. At reception for wedding #2:

Me: Do these beans have meat in them?

Family member who cooked food: No, they just have bacon.