Birthday Bloom

John's Grandma (and our next door neighbour) turned ninety last week. She is very active and has a better social life than I do, so I haven't been able to make her a cake yet (she's been too busy!). Hopefully sometime in the next few weeks.

I saw her on her birthday and she pointed out to her front yard and was delighted that her rose was blooming for her birthday. A birthday gift from nature.

Chicken Stock

I had a wonderful day in the kitchen yesterday, making chicken stock. I'm still working on the three farmer raised chickens I cut up, and yesterday I boiled the chicken backs that I had previously frozen. My reward was as pot of hearty chicken vegetable soup and ten cups of stock for the freezer. Wonderful!

Let's Go Blue Jays

The Toronto Blue Jays are having quite the season, and win or lose they are always fun to watch. They are currently involved in a pennant race, and are set to play the second place Yankees tonight for a three game series. I have a feeling that watching this match up is going to be like watching an early world series. Both these teams want it bad and the Toronto fans will be cheering like mad at the Skydome.

Toronto fans have made some viral Blue Jays videos over the past month, which I thought I would share. The first is a brilliant parody of Taylor Swift's 'Blank Space'.

The second is a home run super cut, up until the last week of August set to Johnny Cash's 'God's Gonna Cut You Down'. Super fun to watch.

Curried Beef #FoodPicFriday

Curried beef served over rice with a side of fried garden zucchini. A wonderful meal that we got to eat twice (I love leftovers). Really, really, good.

Oblivion By The Numbers

I realized I enjoyed Skyrim earlier this year and then spent a lot of time really enjoying it (see some of my stats here and here). After clocking more than 300 hours in the game, I think I have reached a plateau of what I want to do in it. Are there still places to find and quests to do? Of course, but I'm not as eager to go roaming around as I once was.

Skyrim is part five in the Elder Scrolls series of games, and on a recent treasure hunting trip with Dad (to second hand stores), I found Oblivion (Elder Scrolls part four), for $5. I couldn't get into it at first, but once it got me, it got me.

Playing Oblivion after all that time spent in Skyrim is great, as I already know what I'm doing so I can just run around and do my thing. The game mechanics are slightly different, with my favourite change being that merchants have a limited amount of gold they can spend per item, BUT NOT a limited amount of gold they can spend. THIS IS AMAZING, as probably fifty hours of my Skyrim playing was running from merchant to merchant trying to sell stuff (they each had only between 500 and 2000 gold - #skyrimproblems). It's one stop shopping/selling in Oblivion, and obviously my mercantile skill is already at 100.

Oblivion By The Numbers

Current level (at time of this posting): 20

Game days passed: 79

Completed quests: 36

Place found: 62

Houses owned: 4

Skill increases: 366

Training sessions: 97 (I was education poor for a while; all the money I earned went to training)

Number of skills at 100: 2 (Mercantile and Alchemy)

Potions made: 2331

Fame level: 45

Infamy level: 22

Items stolen: 2292

Unicorn friends: 1

Number of Nirnroots found: 73

Number of Xbox Achievements earned: 20 (out of 50)